u/JazzlikeBack6198

Original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/AITAH/s/T4CHRZLATG

Update:
Sadly, the update is kind of disappointing because she still didn’t fully get it.

Yesterday, when things were calm, I sat down with my mom while she was drinking coffee and I was drinking tea and I finally brought everything up. I also wrote her a letter because I express myself better through writing, but I first tried talking to her directly.

I genuinely approached the conversation with as much compassion as I could. I acknowledged how young and overwhelmed she was, everything she had to carry, the domestic violence we both survived, the fact that she had multiple children, work, responsibilities and barely any support. But I also told her that despite understanding all of that, it still impacted me. I explained that I feel like there’s a hole in our relationship because of everything we never talked about the trauma, the emotional distance, all the things that were never said or shown. I told her I love her deeply and that’s exactly why I wanted to have this conversation in the first place. I even suggested therapy because I genuinely want us to heal and have a better relationship (everything I also had mentioned in the last post & comments).

I also explained to her, as kindly as I possibly could, that one of the biggest issues is that love has often felt conditional with her. I brought up how hurtful it is when small things suddenly become reasons why I ‘’don’t deserve’’ kindness, patience, or support. I even explained that the emotional neglect itself is part of why our relationship became so distant in the first place because when a bond is emotionally broken for years, it affects everything else too. Affection, motivation, closeness, willingness to help, emotional safety… all of it.

And honestly, if our relationship had felt emotionally safe and connected growing up, I probably would naturally be more affectionate, more present, more willing to do things out of love instead of emotional exhaustion and distance. At first, I thought she understood me. She actually listened. But then the conversation slowly shifted into her defending herself and talking about how our current relationship problems are mostly because I don’t appreciate her enough, don’t help enough, etc. And that’s when I realized she still wasn’t fully understanding what I was trying to say. Because I wasn’t talking about chores. I was talking about the deeper emotional damage underneath all of this and how it shaped our relationship over time.

At the same time, I do understand that she sounds overwhelmed herself. I genuinely do. But the way she handles it is emotionally immature and after this conversation, I honestly don’t think she’s ready to fully have this discussion yet without turning it into defensiveness or guilt. At some point I just stopped trying to explain myself further because it felt like we were talking around each other instead of actually understanding each other. She didn’t keep the letter instead she threw it away and told me once again, that I’m ungrateful and can’t see her point at all. But I really tried.

So for now, I think I’m just going to take a step back emotionally and focus on myself and everything else going on in my life. Maybe later this year we can revisit this conversation when emotions aren’t so heavy anymore.

I (21F) went out with my best friend (23F) after not seeing each other for a while and somehow ended up in a huge argument with her boss (36M), who now thinks I’m some ‘’psycho’’ for defending her.

For background my best friend still lives at home with her mother and younger siblings. Her home life is stressful, there are constant arguments and she really needs her job because finding work right now is hard. She works at a restaurant owned by a married couple. The wife (38F) comes from money and helped build the restaurant. Her husband, who is also technically her chef/boss, is the problem here. He’s known for being unfaithful, going clubbing behind his wife’s back, flirting with women, etc despite having two daughters.

There’s also another guy involved (24/25M), who’s friends with the chef and visits the restaurant often. He and my best friend started talking and going on dates and things were going really well between them.At one point, this guy told my friend he had a weird feeling that her chef/boss liked her. Apparently he noticed jealousy and strange behavior from him. My friend ignored it because she needed the job.

Fast forward to tonight.
It was my little brother’s birthday earlier in the day, but later that evening my best friend asked if I wanted to go out for drinks because we hadn’t seen each other in a while. I agreed. While walking through the city, we passed both of her bosses and their kids at a restaurant. The husband immediately started teasing her, saying stuff like ‘’Oh she was just going to walk right past us’’ acting weirdly familiar. I already got bad vibes from him. Later, we sat down at a bar for drinks. While we were there, my friend got a call from her chef saying her sister had injured herself badly at work with glass and needed to go to the hospital. Her sister specifically wanted her there.

Obviously my friend panicked and wanted to leave immediately, but the bar was extremely busy and we couldn’t get a waiter to bring the bill. I even offered to stay and pay for everything myself so she could leave, but she refused because she didn’t want to leave me with the bill. Her sister called saying she was bleeding badly and needed to go to the hospital. My friend kept trying to explain that we literally couldn’t leave because nobody was coming to take payment.

Then suddenly her sister called again and told her not to come anymore because the chef was taking her to the hospital instead. After that, the chef started repeatedly calling my friend asking who she was with. He accused her of lying and insisted she was secretly out with the guy she’s seeing. My friend kept saying she was with me, her best friend, which was true.
Then things got weird. He started saying her sister was doing horribly, had lost tons of blood, passed out, and was in terrible condition. My friend started panicking, because she thought something serious had happened.
But then she saw a Snapchat from her sister at the hospital looking completely okay with her hand bandaged. At that point it became obvious he was exaggerating or outright lying to mess with her emotionally (at least to me).

My friend kept asking him where her sister was and if she was okay, but he refused to answer unless she told him who she was with. He kept trying to make it about the guy she’s dating. Eventually my friend was in tears, stressed out, and exhausted. Even though she didn’t believe him at first, her sister not picking up when she tried to call her 5 times made her panic.
I told her the next time her boss called, I was going to speak.

Later we walked to the restaurant because she wanted to confront him in person. The second we got there, he was laughing. My friend calmly explained that what he did wasn’t funny, that he scared her, manipulated her emotions and made her think something terrible had happened to her sister. Instead of apologizing, he kept laughing in her face and saying it was just a joke.

He then started attacking her for ‘’not being there for her sister ‘’ even though she herself told her not to come anymore. He turned to me and basically said to me my best friend was embarrassing for acting like that. At that point I had to step in. I calmly told him he had no right to control her or interrogate her about who she spends time with outside of work. I also told him it was disgusting to intentionally scare someone about their sister being seriously injured just for entertainment. I never screamed, insulted him, or caused a scene. I spoke normally the entire time.

He immediately got defensive and started saying things like ‘’Who even are you?’’ , ‘’You don’t come into my restaurant and talk to me like this’’ , ‘’I should call the police’’ , ’’Your little psycho act won’t go unnoticed’’. He also kept mocking me for staring at him while he laughed in both of our faces. The thing that really got me was that he clearly enjoyed upsetting her. He never apologized once. He just kept laughing and trying to make her feel dramatic and crazy for reacting emotionally after he lied about her sister’s condition.

Eventually we left and later he texted her saying we were disrespectful and insane.

Now I’m wondering if I crossed a line by stepping in even though I genuinely felt like he was emotionally manipulating her and abusing his position as her boss.

AITAH?

I want to give a little background first because I think it’s important for understanding the situation.

My mom was in an abusive relationship with my dad when I was younger and after we left, things between us were never really the same. She started over with a new family and I kind of faded into the background emotionally. I have four younger siblings, so obviously she had a lot on her plate, but me and her were never really close.

Most things I learned growing up came from my grandma. She taught me how to cook, bake, clean, basic girlhood things, emotional things, and she was also the only person in the house who genuinely checked in on me emotionally. Our household has always been chaotic and she was the person who made me feel seen.

So yesterday I was in the kitchen making banana bread while my mom was cooking and somehow we got onto the topic of growing up and moving away. My mom jokingly/playfully said something like, ‘’Well, I raised you, right?’’ and I replied, ‘’You didn’t raise me. Grandma raised me.’’ She got really offended immediately and started calling me ungrateful. I didn’t want to escalate it because both of us can get reactive, so I stopped engaging and kept doing my thing.

Then she suddenly asked me, ‘’As a mother, what do you even feel around me? Mothers are supposed to make their children feel safe, loved, protected. What do you feel around me?’’The way she asked it honestly made me feel like I couldn’t answer negatively without causing a huge fight, so I froze. I genuinely didn’t know what to say. I finally just said ‘’I don’t know ‘’

She got really hurt and angry after that. I eventually admitted that I don’t think she’s done the greatest job as a mother and she started saying I’m ungrateful and that I basically don’t love her. The thing is, I DO love my mom. I know she went through a lot and I know being a mother to five kids isn’t easy. But at the same time, I don’t feel emotionally connected to her the way I do to my grandma, because my grandma was the person who emotionally raised me.

Now the argument is still ongoing and she’s telling people that I basically said I don’t love her….which isn’t true at all.

AITAH??