Kate Hackett
A recent story over on Reddit’s Am I The A**hole subreddit sparked a lot of interest — in it, a mom wanted to know if she was wrong for forcing her daughter to pick between the family or the daughter’s fiancé.
As always, there’s a bit more to this story than what the title suggests.
OP explains that her daughter is just 19 years old and with a 36-year-old man who met her when she was barely 18. Which—yeah, okay, possibly problematic.
I (42f) told my 19 year old daughter who currently lives with her fiancé (36m), that she must either chose us or her soon to be husband unfortunately, who she met when she was newly turned 18 at her father’s (49m) business conference. He has made it seem like we are the bad guys who don’t want them together but that is not it.
OP says she doesn’t want them together because she thinks that the daughter is now distant from the family.
We don’t want them together because of who she has become. She is now distant, only gives us bland replies which we know he has indoctrinated her with, she hasn’t spoken to her father at all because she doesn’t want “work issues” between them, which again wouldn’t happen.
Meanwhile, the fiancé seems to be lavishing the daughter with gifts and rushing the relationship.
He lavishes her with materialistic gifts just so he can manipulate her into loving him or his “company.” He proposed to her just after a year of their relationship.
OP says that he was invited over for Thanksgiving, but the daughter said no – they would be visiting this guy’s family cabin.
Now that thanksgiving is near, we invited her and him over because we knew she wouldn’t come if we didn’t invite him. She still declined and told us she was going to his “families cabin”. We tried to tell her they can come a couple of days after thanksgiving and she still declined.
At this point, OP got mad and told her daughter to pick between this guy and the family. The daughter told them to sleep on it.
That is when I called her and told her, “This isn’t going to be tolerated by me or your father any longer.” I informed her that she must either respect our wishes or his and that “it’s either us or him, who do you pick?” and she just told us to sleep because we seemed sleep deprived from the foolish questions we were asking.
OP says they haven’t spoken for a few days but isn’t sure: is she the jerk?
I haven’t spoken to her since (three days ago) but AITA for giving her this ultimatum?
The comments came in hot asking for more information from OP.
SpiritusSpei wondered, “Why did she cut off her other relatives? That is important INFO as she is about to cut you off, too.”
Capital_Wolf_4932 (aka, the mom in the original post) explained, “That is the problem, i ask her and she just deflects or says “she has been busy”. She has been ignoring her own grandmother.”
The same user also wanted to know, “INFO: how is this received by you and other family’s members that your teenage daughter is basically dating a sugar daddy twice her age? It seems like there is a lot of tension and disapproval which might be the cause of this escalating conflict. Please do clarify a little on the situation.”
And OP clarified once more, “Well, all of her relatives know and think that there is an insurmountable power dynamic that makes it hard for us to believe she is truly “happy”. Which has led to a lot of tension (she doesn’t know of this tension as she cut off all of her relatives).”
