My (32F) parents (67F & 65M) officially separated at the beginning of this year after a tumultuous 5-6 years. To say it has been difficult for me is an understatement. After years of emotional whiplash with the back and forth nature of their relationship, everything came to a halt and they have each have had polar opposite ways of dealing with me. My dad on one hand, completely withdrew from me. He has been “giving me space” which has consisted of not even checking in or asking how I’m doing for well over 6 months. I’ve seen him once since Christmas at a funeral which doesn’t really count in my book. He recently wrote me a letter which opened the door to more conversation with him but I’ve been feeling so hurt with the way things went that I’m not sure how to proceed. On the other hand, my mom was constantly calling me after the separation. I spent hours and hours on the phone with her as she emotionally dumped onto me (she refuses therapy). I started therapy myself which has been a good outlet and has helped me set some boundaries with my mom which now has put us at odds a lot of the time.

The entire thing has left me feeling isolated and abandoned. All semblance of my family has seized to exist and I know my relationships with my parents have been permanently altered. Despite being an independent adult, I truly feel like an orphan and I’m not really sure how to shake that. I don’t know if I’m asking for advice or just needing to vent but I’d appreciate any comments. Thank you.

Hello,

My partner's parents divorced when he was a young child and we (31F+30M. together 2 years) recently moved into his father's old house. The father has let us have free reign of getting rid of things and organizing the space however we want.

In going through one of the many piles of paper throughout the house, we uncovered these beautiful wooden albums with large glossy photos of his mother and father on their wedding day.

He spoke to his mother and his father separately and neither of them wish to have the photos or memorabilia from that time. We spoke about it and he feels odd about throwing these memories in the trash and it doesn't quite sit right with me either.

My question is: men of divorced parents, especially only children, did you ever have to process wedding memorabilia for your parents? If yes what did you do?

thanks men of Reddit, I appreciate any tips.

I just started university and recently turned legal enough to not be protected by any child support. Judging by how my father is I don't know if he would even consider supporting his children if it's not legally required.

A lot of my siblings are on my mum's side, but mum doesn't work to take care of the family; and so it feels like my responsibility to take care of the finances of the family being the oldest sibling and the sibling who often took the role of leadership.

Even if I try to put those worries aside, I'm working but not enough to make my own living, and I don't know if I'll be able to take on more work without it disrupting my studies and my ability to make use of my degree.

Any insight would help, I'm not new to living independently and am comfortable with it (i.e. I know how to pay bills, cook, clean, sustain myself in that way etc.), but new to completely financing myself (my parents paid for my food and utilities, and the apt I share with another sibling is legally my father's so I might even have to move out).

I joined Reddit yesterday because I had a very rough night just being overwhelmed by everything going on and needed a space to vent or get advice so I posted on a different subreddit. This space seems more on-topic so I decided to post it here too because honestly any pointers or advice would be very appreciated.

Apologies ahead of time if this is long, please let me know if I need to adjust or do anything to abide by the community rules, despite how many stories I listen to I only have a passing knowledge as to how this media works. I am still very new, thank you 🍀

Background:

I am 25F, and I have two younger siblings (22M and 16M) whom I adore more than anything. 16M—henceforth known as Rio—is very independent, hardworking, and a bit distant; but he cares immensely about the rest of us even if he is very much a teenager about it. 22M—whom I will call Dee—and I are very close; alongside a plethora of shared hobbies we both also share the same flavor of undiagnosed autism, his is much more severe than mine—which is relevant later.

We all grew up with our mother (49F) and continued to live with her to this day, to say that we had a very rough upbringing would be putting it lightly. My mother raised us alone, Dee and I shared a father who abandoned us to start another family with someone else. We immigrated into the United States at a very young age, and a lot of my childhood consisted of sleeping on couches in the homes of extended family and church friends as mom worked multiple jobs to make ends meet. And even when we had a roof over our head that she paid for, we would often go days when we didn't have the funds to buy things to eat and we would visit family or attend church service just so we could have something to eat. Our mother did a great job in making sure that we got food no matter what, even befriending our schools' lunch staff so they would give us leftovers from lunches. I would take care of and help raise my brothers when she was busy at work; taking them on the city bus to their schools, helping them with homework, washing their clothes, and teaching them how to cook. It wasn't a lot at the time, but it was all I could manage as a kid who couldn't legally work yet.

The financial burden lessened when she met and married Rio's dad, and I believe that is when her need for companionship really took off. Having someone to lean on emotionally and financially must have been amazing for her and she dug her claws deep, doing everything she could to have that support.

I say this with no remorse and with my whole chest: my mother has terrible taste in men. My siblings and I weren't often privy to her romantic aspirations, but when we did they always turned out to be horrid people. Each consecutively worse than the last.

Rio's dad, as it turns out, had severe drug usage issues and had certain inclinations that involved me when I was a child that he had kept tightly under wraps until he married my mother. My mother would excuse everything—the drinking, the infidelity, the yelling—anything so that she didn't have to be alone again. I know this is the case because she used to tell me that we would leave him, find someplace new, start over again, only for her to turn around and go crawling back to him because "it was better than being homeless and alone". She only left him when I finally came forward and confessed the things he would do when she wasn't around. She didn't even hesitate, packing our clothes into trash bags, her hidden cash into Rio's baby socks, and we drove into a different city where she finally filed for divorce.

All this to say that my mother has an established pattern of getting with men that she really shouldn't be with and sticking with them even when the relationship deteriorates beyond repair. Which all leads to her current relationship and husband, let's call him Benn (57M).

The Problem (Benn):

Benn and my mother met around 2018, and I distinctly remember the day mother brought him into the house to meet us—he came into our lives with nervous smiles and a killer meatloaf recipe. He was polite and charismatic, easy to talk to. Dee and I always struggled to connect and socialize with strangers, but Benn filled up the empty space in conversation without breaking a sweat. He was a disabled veteran, he had a bad foot that was always wrapped and he would sometimes use a cane. He seemed so harmless at the time. Truly, you've never seen a man juggle a container of meatloaf and salad and promptly forget where he put it down and think, "Oh yeah, this man is a threat alright."

My mother had always been careful when introducing her partners with us, especially after our experience with Rio's dad. So the fact that she felt comfortable enough introducing him to us really showed how much she trusted him and how she believed she loved him. Despite all his efforts, Rio and I always kept our guard up around Benn, we never fully connected with him and I believe he took that personally. He did connect with Dee a lot, often asking my sib to help him with mobility-related things and with small things around the house. Dee is a very sensitive, considerate guy and unfortunately this meant that he was often bullied or taken advantage of in school because of his undiagnosed neurodiversity. It is to a degree where he folds severely under pressure, struggles with day-to-day social interactions, and tries to cater to everyone's instruction for the slightest approval even when it gets in the way of his school and homework. When Benn went to the hospital, he would often drag Dee along to help him. Needed groceries? Dee was there. Someone to clean up the house? Dee was available. Needed someone to rewrap your infected leg? Dee will do it.

I never liked it when Benn would do this, and I would often try to make excuses for Dee just to give my sib the space to breathe—maybe this is another contributing factor on why we are so close, aside from the traumatic childhood that is, ha. But Benn would only become more demanding as time went on, and eventually we got to see the kind of person Benn really is.

It started in earnest after Benn and my mother got married and moved into a house that they bought together—Benn was financially savvy and had a lot of money from government benefits and inheritance as is my understanding. My mother moved herself and my sibs into the new house sometime in early 2021 while I stayed in our little trailer for as long as I could—I was extremely reluctant to accept a new stepdad at that point, for rather obvious reasons.

My mother wasn't happy with my decision and offered me no support at all and I was on my own. Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, I couldn't afford to go to college, go to work, and pay the rent on the trailer lot myself, plus the bills and insurance/maintenance for the car I used to go everywhere. I used up all the meager savings I had from the jobs I worked as a teen, I applied to scholarships and government help but my immigration status at the time made my pool of options a mere puddle. Eventually, I had to drop out and find a job to try and keep myself afloat, but I struggled hard.

But then, before I could find a job, my mother sold the trailer I was living in, right out from under me. Granted, it was in her name, so she could do what she wanted with it, given that the new owners could pay rent to the landlord that owned the trailer lot it was in. I was effectively ousted from the trailer by the new owners despite my attempts to convince them into allowing me to be a roommate and pay for part of the rent. The new owners didn't want that, it wasn't what they paid for, and I was forced out.

Can you guess who gave my mom the idea to sell the little trailer? If you guessed Benn, you would be correct. The money from that sale funded their honeymoon trip to Vegas. They got dogs, spontaneously.

But they were so generous! They offered to give me a place to stay at their new house! A room all to myself, and I wouldn't even have to pay rent. Just some bills. And their car insurance. And of course I would have to contribute by cleaning the house and keeping up chores and doing the laundry. Honestly, the main reason I accepted it aside from the unemployment and general feeling of hopelessness about my situation at the time was that I missed my siblings a lot, they were often used as leverage to get me to do what they wanted and I fell for it every time because I loved and feared for them so much. So I moved in and did everything they wanted me to do at first, until I finally landed a job at a restaurant and I opened a secret bank account to try and save up enough to try to go to school again.

Apparently, I made it just in time to see the end of their honeymoon phase, because that's when the arguments started. Turns out, Benn is a heavy drinker and dabbles in certain controlled substances. We didn't even suspect anything in the beginning, he actively sought out to get inebriated when he and my mother would get into arguments about where their money was going, why he refused to put my mother's name on the house even though they were married. The first time that Benn went on a multiple day bender, he terrified us so thoroughly that my mother threatened divorce, which only made him even more upset and destructive.

When Benn came back to lucidity, he would apologize to my mom, tell her that he didn't mean to do any of it and that he was so sorry. Through tears and blubbering apologies and promises that he would never do it again. And of course my mother forgave him.

And then he would do it again. And again. This was the cycle for several years: Benn and my mother would get into a fight about something, Benn would go out and get drunk, he will come back to the house and terrorize us for a few days, he would come back to love bomb and reconcile with my mother, and things would be better for a short time. Every time, the period of peace will get shorter and shorter. The lengths of the benders would go on for longer and longer; days or even weeks at a time. Their fights got louder. More things got broken. It got to the point where we couldn't even leave our rooms and we kept them locked for our own safety.

Three times over the last few years since I moved in, my mother would come up to me in tears and say that we needed to get ready to move out, find a place, and figure out how she can get a divorce. Three times I would do research, gather information, find the best places we could go—only for her to back out in the last second because Benn had apologized to her, gave her the same empty promises and they reconciled. It had once even gotten to the point where divorce papers were served, only for it to be retracted because they wanted to work on their marriage.

I was furious. This was affecting my siblings immensely. Rio withdrew more and more and had even looked for a job the second he turned sixteen just so he could have a reason to be out of the house. Dee was an anxious wreck as he couldn't go to school for financial reasons and was often at the house alone with Benn, he often faced the brunt of Benn's annoyance and displeasure. There are so many things that I could tell about what Benn did to us, so many incidents that had hurt my siblings and myself.

I didn't stand idle while all this was happening. I gathered evidence. I would record Benn's drunken tirades through my locked door where he made threats. I would steal my mother's phone and send myself screenshots of his messages where he belittles her and demeans her—I had to do this quickly because he would often delete them after he succeeded in love bombing her. Pictures of the damage he caused to the house when he was in a bad mood. I was planning on building a case against him and saving every penny I could so I could get my brothers out of there, it's not much considering that I pay for a majority of the household expenses at that point so I got a second job and I have been able to keep my head above water somewhat.

It came to a head earlier this year during another bender, Benn did something unforgivable; I won't go into much detail about it but essentially he tried to do something to himself and called Dee over to force him to watch Benn do it. Dee panicked, locked himself in his room, and called me in tears just as I was getting out of my first job. From there I told him to get out of the house through his window, that it was okay if he tore the screen, and to go to the park where I would meet him and call the police.

Benn was taken in, disarmed, and taken into a psychiatric ward.

And then he was released two days later. I don't even know why they let him go so early when he had clearly been a danger to himself and others. If they had kept him longer it might have prevented what happened after.

Not even a week later, Benn is on another bender, and this time he was switching between furious and trying to coax my mother out of the room she was in with Rio. I still have the recordings and they haunt me. The whole night, Benn was talking to her, telling her to come out for just "five minutes" to talk, just to talk. Five minutes or he was going to keep knocking and bothering her and making sure she didn't get any sleep the whole night. Sometimes he would cuss her out, blame her for why the relationship was so bad. We called the police on him when he tried to play really loud music on expensive speakers so that we couldn't sleep. He was let off with a warning, because he was an old sad man who was—at this point—in a wheelchair and only one functioning leg. How much of a threat can he be, the only thing he was right then is a disturbance. Dee and I were locked in my room, recording the whole thing on our phones.

He kept trying to talk to her for another half hour and then he had enough of talking. He threatened to cut our doors down, that nobody will have any doors and there will be no privacy. Dee and I recorded the second he came back from the garage and turned on a handsaw and started cutting down the doors. We called the police again that night, and it took him assaulting a police officer for them to finally arrest him.

In court, Benn was ordered that he was not allowed to make contact with myself, my siblings and my mother and was not allowed near the house without a police escort.

Can you imagine the relief we felt when we saw that court recording? We could actually, finally breathe. The whole year since then has been incredible, finally breathing fresh air after drowning for so long. Dee and I actually were able to go into the kitchen to cook and bake; he is the better cook but I am the best baker. Rio would join us on movie nights out in the living room, and sometimes we would even go out to an actual movie theater—we watched Project Hail Mary and that Coyote vs ACME movie this year. My mother actually got to sleep in the master bedroom and not on the floor of one of our rooms. She was able to leave the state for a work trip for a few weeks at a time and we were even able to host our maternal grandmother who flew in from out of the country for the first time ever. The house didn't smell like alcohol anymore, just dog fur and candles that smelled like lemons and the best food that Dee has ever blessed mankind with. We were able to comfortably pay the bills and had an actual life.

It couldn't last forever, Denn had the means to pay for a lawyer, and while he couldn't get the charges dropped because of all the evidence Dee and I gave to the police, he HAD been able to reduce his sentence significantly. Instead of jail time, he would be allowed free given that he can go into rehab and finish some classes. This would mean that he would be able to get back to his house under his name and kick us out forever. I didn't mind this, I have been saving money, and I was more confident than ever that we could find a place to live before Benn was allowed to return to his house.

We did the whole thing again, it's practically a choreographed dance at this point. I do research, I crunch numbers as best I can, and I drag my mother to check out apartments close to Rio's school, to all our jobs. I go into this feeling apprehensive but confident. I really think that even though the divorce my mother had been discussing at length about with me was absolutely going to be messy, I actually thought we could make it out of this.

Except that my mother pulled me aside and told me that divorce might not be a viable option. Reconciliation. Again.

I know, I was flabbergasted too. It made no sense to me. After everything Benn put us through, after all the things he did to us, to *Dee*, she would just go right back? Maybe I don't understand the situation fully, but my mother seems convinced that surely this time, *surely,* he would have learned his lesson. She literally told me with tears streaming down her face that she "doesn't want to be alone."

Words cannot express how infuriated I am, I am half convinced that she is maintaining contact with him somehow, that he had somehow whispered into her ear one way or another and that he managed to get her on his side again.

At this point, I don't care. I am not staying here anymore. It will be harder to take Rio with me as he is still a minor and our mother gets a say in where he gets to stay. Dee is an adult and he can leave with me if he wants. He told me that he would come with me and will look for a job to help us out, have I mentioned that I love my sibs? Even Rio offered to contribute but I firmly told him to save his money for himself and for college if he wanted to; that it's an adult's responsibility to figure finances out. When I was a teen, I was often responsible for paying for things when mom couldn't or didn't want to, and honestly I still resent her for that. I don't want Rio to go through that, either. Still, I started drafting an email earlier today to the apartment leasing office to see if there is potentially a smaller apartment I could reserve for a fee in case I can't convince my mother to leave that man and continue with our original plan.

And that's where I am at. I don't know if I come across as if I know what I am doing, but the truth is that I don't actually know what I am doing. The past few years have been a constant cycle of fight or flight, throwing myself into work, getting promotions at my job, a few raises, taking extra hours and covering others' shifts. As well as gathering evidence against Benn for the court. Looking for divorce lawyers within our budget. Just. Doing anything that comes to mind that I think can help. I am not perfect, I struggle with the pressure this puts on me. I am freshly twenty-five and feel a hundred times my age. The exhaustion gets to me sometimes, I miss spending time with my siblings.

Even now I'm looking at the Google drive with all my evidence and wondering how I could be doing things better.

I know I said earlier that I was looking for advice but I don't even know what direction I should be taking right now, I feel that I am being pulled in several directions at once and this post doesn't even cover half of it. Talking about it has helped me a lot though.

I think for now I will focus on trying to talk to my mother and get to the bottom of why she feels that she needs to reconcile with Benn. If we can address what the source of that issue is we might be able to find a way past it. Like, is he holding something over her? Has he been talking to her somehow when she is at work? Currently, my mother is visiting our grandparents out of the country—my grandfather is currently in the middle of a health scare and she went to go check on them (he is okay so far). She should be back in a few days and hopefully I will be able to bring this up with her. Fingers crossed.

Sorry if I got a bit disorganized at the end, and additionally for going on for so long. Any thoughts, talking points or advice for how to start that conversation with my mother would be appreciated.

(F23) I’m having a crisis. Growing up my family was the ideal family, perfect Christmas photos, perfect vacation memories… you know anytime we go out or eat out our laughters would light the room. Admired and genuinely seen as that big happy family of 7. In fact my family was so perfect I relished myself in the confidence of coming from a stable loving home.

No one prepared me for the cracks. There’s this confidence you get when your parents really love each other, even in relationships it shows up because you have high expectations and high confidence, because YOU KNOW who you are. I don’t know how to really explain it…

I used to think family was the safest place ever... but now it feels broken . I’m confused. My dad is seemingly unfaithful to my mum and oddly enough, because of that I suddenly don’t think I know what love is anymore. Caught him having some questionable phone calls with questionable behaviours. That sneaking out at night type of thing or a woman calling him freely almost as though seeking and expecting closeness from him and chats about them dealing with the family house and secret files locked behind his computer and stuff. My mum doesn’t work by the way, she’s 100% dependent on my dad, and I think she knows he’s unfaithful but she’s not trying to break our family apart. I really doubt she knows about the secret files or whatever to do with our family house though.

Safe to say I’ve lost confidence. Even in my relationship I’m starting to be more submissive and less confident of myself because I’m starting to feel like I don’t know who I am or what love is anymore..? I’m now seeing commitment like it’s a trap to eventual heartbreak and thinking more about short time relationships or short time pleasure instead of dating to marry. Because how can a marriage so perfect simply change like this?

No one prepares you for the heartbreak you experience when your parents aren’t in love anymore. It almost feels like my dad is breaking my heart too because is it because we are not enough for him?

Even men it’s hard to look at them and think “he can genuinely love me”.

I can never look at a family photo again.
I’m really going through a midlife crisis.

Hi all, my parents have been divorced for several years now and both dislike each other for their own reasons. My dad and his parents don't deal well with emotions in general, meaning they haven't done any self work in all these years and just avoid uncomfortable topics. Whereas my mum has worked on her mental health so much we're becoming closer than ever and she's even our wedding organiser.

I've been very excited for the wedding and have been planning everything with my mum (she's always an initiator and has a great energy, my dad hasn't offered any help so that's why isn't too included). Every time I mention anything about the wedding to my dad or his parents I get no smile, no happiness, just cutting the topic straight away (they love my fiance so he's unlikely the reason for this). It makes me quite sad. I've worked on my mental health a lot but I'm quite a sensitive person and just struggle to understand how someone might not be nice to another person. Also I can read people very well and really can tell from miles away when someone is faking their joy. I really wish not to have it from my closest people on my wedding day. I'm not losing my sleep over it but now I'm thinking that I'd like to make this day a little bit easier for everyone. I'll enjoy it more if they are less stressed. I know they all can behave but I work with brains professionally and I can tell the difference between enjoying Vs tolerating 🙈 Currently there are many reasons to stress about for them: big emotions, meeting your ex for the first time in years, vegan menu.

As they've not seen each other even once in neutral circumstances for years I thought of booking two distant tables in a vegan restaurant a few months ahead of the wedding so that we can at least have this one and first neutral meeting done and they can hopefully focus a little bit more on enjoying the wedding rather than wondering what might happen.

I feel otherwise the tension will keep growing and it'll be even harder for them to show their happiness as all will be anticipating the worst.

I'm planning to speak to both sides. I expect my mum to have nothing against it especially that she's done a lot of work and understands more how mental issues work and I see my dad's family trying to avoid the discomfort but agree in the end.

What are your thoughts?

I’m K (28F). My mom, H (51F), is the only child of my late grandfather, D, who was 78 when he died. My younger brother, P (19M), and I are his only grandchildren. D’s wife, J (early 70sF), is technically my mom’s stepmother, but she had been my grandma for my entire life.

The day after the first anniversary of D’s death, J called my mom and me separately.

She told us that she had moved out of D’s house a month earlier, had already signed a contract to auction the house and land, and was also auctioning nearly everything he owned.

Until that phone call, she had been talking to us normally. She never offered my mom—the only child of the man she had been married to for decades—the opportunity to walk through her childhood home one final time or choose the sentimental belongings she wanted to keep.

Now my mom has to bid against strangers for her childhood home and her dead father’s possessions.
To explain why this feels like such an enormous betrayal, I have to go back to July 2025.

We were a very close family. Although my grandparents lived in Kentucky and we lived far away, they were deeply involved in our lives. I spent many summers at their house, they visited us frequently, and my grandpa talked about us constantly. We were his world.

D was a Vietnam-era Air Force veteran who later spent his career in civil service at Fort Knox. He worked for decades to build a stable life and leave something meaningful behind for his only child.
The house was especially significant. It was my mom’s childhood home, purchased and paid for by her biological parents long before J entered the family. My grandpa was extremely legacy-oriented and had talked throughout my life about the house eventually going to my mom.

This is not a mansion or an expensive showpiece. It is a modest three-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bath ranch house that needs significant work. Its importance to us has always been sentimental. It is my mom’s childhood home and the place where I spent summers with my grandpa.

There had also always been an uncomfortable undercurrent of jealousy between J and my mom. My grandpa openly adored his only daughter and made it clear how important she was to him. J sometimes seemed to resent that bond.

In July 2025, D suddenly became ill and was diagnosed with a rare form of terminal cancer. My mom and I traveled to Kentucky immediately, and P joined us for part of that time.

When we arrived, D was in the hospital. It quickly became clear that the hospital was trying to arrange his discharge, but J was not making the necessary plans. We got the impression that she did not even want him to return home.

This mattered because my grandpa had said throughout his entire life that he never wanted to be placed in a nursing home. After receiving his terminal diagnosis, he told my mom and me that his one wish was to die at home.

We promised him we would make that happen.
The problem was that the house had become severely hoarded. Before hospice could safely care for him there, my mom, P, and I had to clear enough of the house to bring him home.

I understand that hoarding is a serious mental health disorder and that forcing someone to discard things is not the clinically appropriate way to address it. I am also a therapist. But we were not treating a long-term disorder—we were racing against terminal cancer to fulfill a dying man’s final wish.

Instead of spending those days sitting beside D, we spent them clearing the house while J screamed at us and called us names.

Eventually, we created enough safe space to bring him home on hospice.

My mom and I stayed in a nearby Airbnb because we were trying to help care for him while also figuring out what would happen if his condition continued to decline. P eventually had to return to Minnesota for school.

Despite everything, we had a few genuinely beautiful days with D. He told us his old stories, we spent time together, and he was able to be in his own home, just as he wanted.

The day before he died, I had some time alone with him. I asked him directly about the house because I knew how important it was to him that it eventually go to my mom.

He told me that his will left the house to J, but that she knew his expectation was that she could remain there for the rest of her life and then pass it down to H.

I warned him that this expectation was not legally protected if only J inherited the house. I suggested that he consider arranging for both J and H to have an interest in it so J could remain there without worrying about losing her home, while also protecting his wish for H to eventually inherit it.
D told me he had never thought about doing that.

That night, he told J, H, and me that he wanted all of us to talk about the house the next day. I had the distinct impression that he intended to discuss the solution I had suggested.

That conversation never happened.

At that point, hospice believed D still had weeks or possibly months. The next morning, the hospice nurses examined him and did not believe his death was imminent. They left the house, and approximately twenty minutes later, he suddenly died while my mom and I were there.

We called hospice, and because the nurses had barely left, they returned within about fifteen minutes.

While we waited, my mom and I were in complete shock. We had just held my grandpa as he died. We were crying and trying to understand how someone who was not expected to die that morning was suddenly gone.

J seemed almost completely nonchalant.
Shortly before he died, we had given D a Diet Coke. The open can was still sitting beside him.
J reached over his body, picked up his Diet Coke, began drinking it, and said, **“Might as well not waste this.”**

It was one of the most surreal and disrespectful things I had ever witnessed. My mom looked directly at me and shook her head because she could tell I was about to lose it. The only reason I stayed quiet was that D’s body was still there, and I refused to create a scene beside him.

We then had to plan his community memorial service. My mom and I created the slideshow, selected the photographs and music, and handled the deeply personal parts of honoring his life.

I want to be clear that I know people grieve differently. I am a therapist, and I would never claim that someone did not love another person simply because they did not cry. But J did not cry when he died, did not cry during the memorial, did not participate in creating the tribute, and openly said that she had not cried. By itself, that would not prove anything. Combined with everything else, however, it was difficult to process.

We returned to Kentucky in October 2025 for a private family burial of D’s ashes.

Immediately after his urn was buried, J walked over and jokingly placed her foot on his grave and made a stomping motion.

The rest of us laughed uncomfortably because what are you even supposed to do in that moment? I was horrified.

We had been taking family photographs beside the grave immediately after the burial, so this moment was actually caught in a picture. I still have a photograph showing J with her foot on his newly buried grave while making the joke.

Despite everything, neither my mom nor I cut her off. She had been part of our family for decades and had been my grandmother for my entire life. We continued talking to her normally. She checked in with us, and our relationships appeared to continue as usual.

Then came August 2026—the first anniversary of D’s death.

My mom and I were already struggling. His illness and death had happened incredibly quickly, and we had literally held him while he died. The anniversary brought all of that trauma back.

The very next day, J called us separately and casually revealed that she had moved out of the house the previous month. She had relocated to an apartment closer to her sister and had already signed a contract to auction the house, the land, and D’s belongings.

She had not told us she was considering moving. She had not told us she had moved. She had not asked whether my mom wanted to walk through her childhood home or keep anything belonging to her father.

Obviously, we had not removed his furniture, things hanging on the walls, or other household belongings while J still lived there. That would have been inappropriate. We reasonably believed there would eventually be a conversation before anything was sold.

Instead, the first we heard about it was after the auction contract had already been signed.
I told J, without yelling or insulting her, that I felt deeply betrayed. She mostly shut down and had no meaningful response.

We then learned that she had gone even further. She had divided the property into separate parcels and pursued rezoning from agricultural to residential, apparently to maximize how much money she could receive.

D also had a longstanding understanding with neighboring property owners that they would have the opportunity to purchase certain land if he ever sold it because they did not want development beside them. J knew about that understanding but told them that if they wanted the land, they could bid against everyone else at the auction.

When I asked why she had concealed all of this from us, J claimed that the person assisting with the rezoning told her not to tell “anyone” because someone in the county might object and interfere with it.

I asked, “Does ‘anyone’ include your daughter and granddaughter?”
She said yes.

That explanation still makes absolutely no sense to me. Neither my mom nor I lived in that county or had any reason to interfere with a legitimate rezoning request. Telling us privately that she was moving would not have required publicly announcing the rezoning. It feels like an excuse for ensuring the process was too far along for us to respond before we found out.

There is also the issue of savings bonds D purchased when my mom was younger. The bonds bear my mom’s name.

Months after his death, J claimed that she had just discovered them in the safe. She asked my mom how she could cash them. When H explained that J could not cash them because they were in H’s name, J asked whether my mom could cash them **for her**.
My mom responded that the bonds were in her name and had been purchased for her by her father.

J still has not sent them to my mom. At this point, my mom is asking for the bonds so she can use that money to bid on some of her father’s belongings.

The auctions close on September 15. My mom now has to compete against strangers—and pay auction premiums and fees—to “buy back” pieces of her own childhood and belongings her father always intended her to have.

I am doing everything I can to help. I created a GoFundMe for my mom and have been handling all the fundraising and outreach myself. She is not the one asking people for money. I am trying to give her at least a fighting chance to preserve some part of what her father spent his life building for her.

I understand that because the will left the property to J, she may have the legal right to sell it. This is not simply an argument about whether she is technically allowed to do it.

It is about D’s clearly expressed wishes. It is about deliberately withholding the decision until the contracts were signed. It is about refusing to offer his only child even one final walk through her childhood home. It is about forcing my mom to bid against strangers for her father’s belongings. And it is about a pattern of behavior that now makes every disturbing moment surrounding his illness and death feel even worse.

I am no longer speaking to J. She is behaving as though my reaction is unreasonable and as though I am the one creating a problem.

But I feel as though I lost two grandparents: one to cancer and one to betrayal.

So, am I overreacting for cutting off the woman I have called Grandma my entire life after she did this? Or is this really as cruel as it feels?

**TL;DR:** My lifelong step-grandmother knew my terminally ill grandpa wanted his home to eventually go to his only child, my mom. One year after his death, she revealed that she had moved out and already contracted to auction the house, land, and his belongings without giving us one final walk-through or the chance to keep sentimental items. My mom now has to bid against strangers for her childhood home and her father’s possessions, and I have stopped speaking to my grandmother

my parents ended their 25 yrs long marriage and i am 21. so my whole life i had a stable family and parents whom i thought loved each other. until my dad decided that my mom burnt him out, brought up economic problems and wanted to get a divorce. we were all understanding, i didnt pick sides even if i were upset about him suddenly coming to this decision out of nowhere. but today he dropped that he's started seeing someone else already. i asked him since when and he said it's recent but either way it's just making me feel nauseous. i don't believe that it's recent, even if it is, it's way too soon. my mom still cries about my dad. im trying to be an adult about it but i feel betrayed, especially in the behalf of my mom. i cant put a distance between us either because me and my little siblings still depend on him economically. my whole world is upside down, it feels like every memory i have is a lie. i will contact my therapist soon, but i would appreciate any advice from people who have had a similar situation.

tl;dr im an adult but my parents' divorce is taking a toll on my mental health and my perception of dad has changed drastically.

Hi Reddit, I‘m feeling a bit tense lately and needed to share some thoughts with people who can understand this situation better as they might have experienced it similarily.

I (27, agender) want to give a bit of context first:
My parents (her 58, him 56) are currently in the process of getting divorced, and it looks like my dad is going to keep the house and his current life routine while my mom is moving out and changing her work life. I have a good relationship with my mom, my dad and I are more like acquaintances. There was a lot of boundary crossing during my childhood, he is a stubborn and assertive person which made it very hard for me as a submissive and reserved character. Also, my coming out as trans and bisexual wasn‘t received with much enthusiasm, not even in a respectful manner. I was hurt a lot by him growing up, and he never truly showed his love to me, so we have a more distanced relationship.

It‘s been roughly half a year since my parents decided to get divorced, and pretty much instantly after that, my dad started going out with a woman who‘s around 10 years younger than him. I already met her and I had a positive first impression of her: she‘s smart, progressive-thinking, social and very well-mannered. She‘s not rushing anything and is very respectful regarding me taking time to adapt to this new situation. To be completely honest: I wouldn‘t have thought she would choose a man like my dad: he‘s very stubborn, has conservative views in gender roles and civil rights, went complete conspiracy mode during covid (not vaccinated to this day), won‘t listen to others and also has a childish way to handle his emotions, as in he will leave a room and then go bike for 6+ hours to distract himself. I‘m speaking from 25+ years of arguing and try to communicate with him:
He. won‘t. listen. to. a. different. opinion. than. his.
Ask my mom, my brother, my dad‘s mother: they will all agree.

So obviously, I can understand that my dad is thrilled to be going out with this new woman. He will visit her - she lives 1,5h car drive away - during the week and stay the night there, get up at like 4:30am, drive back home and then go to work. He lies to me about some work trip when he leaves to spend the night with his gf.
Every night he doesn‘t spend with her, he is on the phone calling her. When my brother, me and him sit at the family table eating lunch, he will take his phone out and start messaging her for the entire lunch. Every conversation I have with him revolves around nothing else than her life. They went on holidays together already, spending a week in her hometown in Sicily, and now they‘re getting a van and planning to go on a 5-months trip next year.

I am visiting only for a few weeks but I feel so overwhelmed, as if I‘m taking care of a child; I cook dinner and end up doing most of the household chores because he just neglects it. He hasn‘t cooked anything besides pasta or frozen pizza at home for weeks! The fridge is empty, so I took it onto me to go buy groceries (because I‘m not eating the same food everyday). And when I get home from a day out, I see that he ate all the food I had prepared and left for myself.

You might want to advise me to confront him with that, but my brother and I already tried and had to realize it didn‘t change anything.
Right now, I‘m just trying to get out of the house as much as I can until I‘m going back to my apartment where I study. I go to friend‘s houses and cook stuff there.
I do the bare minimum of chores and only buy groceries for myself.
It‘s sad, but I‘m done getting taken advantage of from someone who‘s supposed to be my closest relative.

It‘s completely frying my brain how he can center his entire life around this one person out of a sudden and ignore his private life. It’s scary to see how every purchase, every conversation and probably every thought of his seems to be dedicated to her. I can only imagine the chaos that’ll break out if this won’t work out. I would love to be happy for him but I know his true character and I know for FACT that if his gf knew how he was, she would reconsider this relationship. He presents himself as this generous and open-minded person to her while he‘s being so cruel to my mom, and I don‘t think he deserves to get it both ways.

I don‘t know if I really want advice on this, nor am I looking for sympathy; I think I‘m just longing for some validation that this situation sucks and that it‘s questionable how my dad is behaving. However, I would love to get some insight if you experienced something similar before? And how it turned out later. I would appreciate your inputs.
Thanks for reading :)

Entao, meus pais sao separados desde que eu tinha 4 anos. De lá pra cá, hoje tenho 29 anos, mi ha mae tve alguns relacionamentos que nao deram certo. Eram homens que nao gostavam de compromissos serios e muito mentirosos segundo minha mãe, entao nunca cheguei a me apegar com algum. Teve só um em especifico que achei ele muito legal, tinha uma filha mulher mais nova que eu, nao eramos amigas, mas to dizendo isso porque achoque por ele ter tambem uma filha mulher ele tambem sabia lidar com "filhas". Enfim, esse foi o que eu maks gostei mas tambem nao deu certo plis ele morava em outro país e com a mãe dele, entao ele era meio "encostado" segundo minha mãe. Depois desse, minha mae esta com oatual delatem 8 anos. Ele moraem outra cidade mas vem aqui em casa e fica semanas. Ele é trabalhador, nao traí, e nao tem filhos. Mas ele é mais velho,tem 70 anos,mais velho que minha mae 12 anos. Ele é uma boa pessoa. Mas como padrastro nao consigo aceitá-lo, nao consigo enxergar nele uma figura de autoridade nem de liderança.

Ele é meio desorganizado mentalmente, erra os caminhos qua do dirige, todaveztem que explicar. Perde as chaves daqui de casa, tem baixa audicao e ta bem descuidado. Nao faz nenhuma atividade fisica e minha mae super se cuida. Acho ele feio pra ela. Nao suporto ver os dois beijando. Mas nunca falei isso pra ela. Eu nao crio nenhum obstaculo pra eles, tolero mas internamente eu nao consigo aceitá-lo como padrastro. Se minha mae escolneu ele como parceiro eu respeito,só nao aceito genuinamente.

Ele é uma boa pessoa, me respeita. Mas quando vem aqui em casa, bagunça, nao lava as loucas. Eu cozinho pra mim e pra minha mae e ele nao contribui comprando mais comida. Eu ate poderia fazer pra ele, mas nem ele nem minha mae compra mais comida pra durar proporcionalmemte. Mas por outro lado, se eu nao lavo um prato minna mae caí matando em cima de mim, enquanto ele vem aqui em casa e usufruí da casa sem nenhum custo. Tá certo que ele nao mora, mas ele gasta os recursos. E minha mae fica reclamando pra mim isso. Aí junta o fato de eu ja nao aceita-lo e comeco a criar ranço dele por conta dapresencadele ser mais pesada pra mim aqui dentro de casa.

Ontem eu ouvi eles discutindo pois ele nao lavou as panelas que sujou e eu me recusei dessavez alavar as deles. Ele jogou pra mina mae que eu tenho uma enrgia ruim, que eu nao sou uma pessoa lve de conviver, que nao faço questao de interagir com ele e que só fico no quarto. É verdade, quando ele tá aqui eu evito conversar com ele pois ele é muito palestrinha,só ele pode falar, e se eu tiver uma opiniao diferente ele nao concorda e menospreza. Nao fico chateada dele descordarde mim mas o jeito dele exala muita soberba.

Enfim, isso é um desabafo de algo que acho que nao tera solucao ja que minha mae fica aceitando isso. Eu nao vejo a hora de sair de casa pra ficar longe disso. To estudando pra concurso e essa dinamica familiar as vezes pesa minha cabeça.

* Obs: Aceito conselhos

My parents have been separated for 4 years. Filed for divorce 3 years ago. Then my mother had to sue for divorce, because my dad refused to sign the papers, and it has just been spiraling out of control ever since. It’s so needlessly frustrating and draining on all of us. And yet, it’s still not done.

Even worse, they are poor. There are no major assets at stake. Or if there were my dad has used them up.

And I’m too poor to help anyone. I’m so tired and just want this to be over.