I Didn’t Really Know my Mother
I grew up loving my mother dearly, as most sons do. She was protective, kind, beautiful, successful, and smart, and was someone I strove to be like when I was young. However, I wasn’t seeing the real side of her. The one that is at her core. Within the past three years, I have come to despise her. She is selfish, manipulative, two-faced, and an overall bad human, which is a tough pill to swallow when I adored her for 25 years.
It’s weird how you don’t really know your parents until you become an adult. I just need to get this off my chest. So, my parents are in their late 50s. My dad is very successful and is an all-around good guy, great father to my sisters and I, and is a way better husband than my mom deserves. They’ve been together since they were in high school.
In their sophomore year, my mom literally pulled a girl out of his Jeep and got in because she wanted to be with him (red flag). He is more passive, and my mom is aggressive (obviously). Any honey-do list he got, he did it. Anything my mother wanted, she got. His brother and even I always gave him a hard time for being so whipped with her.
They went into over $90,000 in debt when I was 13 because my mom wanted a big house, Mercedes, and other stuff they couldn’t afford at the time. We went on expensive vacations that she planned, we ate at nice restaurants we couldn’t afford, and the only thing my dad ever stood his ground on was that he gets to deer hunt with the guys three weekends a year, which my mom still complained about being left out of.
She has always had to be the center of whatever he does in his life, no exceptions. But that isn’t what made me see her for who she was. It got even darker than that. Four years ago, my now wife and I were soon to be married. My mom suggested we all take a motorcycle trip one weekend with her old co-worker, we’ll call him James.
She explained he was going through a tough time with his ex-wife and needed to get away. We go and have a good time for a weekend, but it just felt weird. It was my mom, dad, my now wife, and James. The dynamic and overall vibe of being around my mom’s old friend was strange. He was a nice enough guy, he was tall, handsome, rich and brawny.
He had an ex-wife and two kids around my age, and he loved taking pictures of my mom and dad, which creeped me out. Anyways, nothing of importance happened on this trip, but my mom starts acting strange afterward and my dad and older sister are the ones who noticed it. At this time, I lived with my fiancée on the other side of the city, but my older sister was living with my parents.
One night, a few weeks after our motorcycle trip, my fiancée, sister, mom, and I went to a concert. My mom was acting weird, downing beers (this isn’t like her at all) and just being weird in general. It was like she was a whole different person all of a sudden. After being there for 10 minutes, she said, “I’m going to grab a drink,” and gets up and disappears for an hour.
I went looking for her after she had been gone for 45 minutes as I was concerned for her safety. When I came back with no luck, I ask my sister if she’s been able to get a hold of her. She rolls her eyes and goes, “I didn’t bother calling, she’s probably calling James.” What the heck? My sister then reveals the truth. She tells me that she and dad suspect she is having an affair with him.
She goes on to explain how sketchy she has been acting, doing things like changing her phone and iPad password, stepping out for phone calls and whispering, even putting a jar of rocks on her phone while she slept so she would be woken up if anyone touched it. Weird. My dad managed to look in her phone before she changed her password and quickly skimmed through her texts with James.
He saw some suspicious and cryptic dialogue. Anyway, my mom finally gets back to us at the concert and at this point, I am angry and devastated all at once. I ask her what took so long and she says, “Oh I ran into some old friends from my old job ” Immediately sensing the lie, I ask who. She didn’t expect this follow-up question, but slyly responds with, “You don’t know them.”
I then ask, “Well, what are their names?” She’s feeling the pressure and stutters before managing to make up some fake names. My wife and sister are listening to my interrogation very intently. I get sick of her, though, and drop it. I am livid and crushed and thinking of my dad. My sister had already gotten to the point of disgust I was at, so she didn’t say anything and we all kind of ignored it…until the next day.
After this concert incident, my sister tells my dad what happened, and he finally approaches my mom about everything. He demanded to see her call history and sees a 45-minute call to James at the time of the concert, along with many others. He demands to know what is going on, and she says he is just going through a hard time with his ex, who is apparently debilitated from alcoholism, and she was just helping him get through it as a friend.
Basically, the sketchiness goes on for months, and at the time of my wedding, my dad has a tracker in her goddarn car, has requested call logs from the phone company, and is looking at hiring a private investigator. I still remember dancing with her at my wedding; she looked at me adoringly and I couldn’t look back at her. Little did my dad or I know, me and my love for my kayaking would soon give him everything he needed.
A month or so after my wedding, I go to stay with my old college roommate for a weekend of kayaking and fishing. He lived by my grandparents’ lake house (my mom’s parents) and I was going to pick up my kayak from their house that day. My dad randomly calls me just to say hi and probably tell me about whatever sketchy stuff my mom had been up to.
Though this is probably not healthy, he is my best friend, and this had been our conversations lately. I tell him that I’m headed to the lake house and he responds, “I doubt she would be this bold, but your mom said she was at the lake house with her girlfriends this weekend and I want you to be prepared if that isn’t the case. If it isn’t, let me know.”
I knew what he meant. I didn’t give my mom a heads up that I was coming on purpose and as I drive up, I’m relieved to see just her car and another girly-looking car in the driveway. I call my dad before going in and tell him my initial assessment is that nothing sketchy is going on from what I see, just looks like her and her friends are here.
He’s as relieved I am. I walk up, knock on the door, and it’s silent. The back-patio door is unlocked so I walk in. The first thing I see ruins me. It’s a leather motorcycle jacket hanging on one of the barstools and I immediately recognize it as James’s. My heart starts pounding and my adrenaline is pumping as my vision gets all weird and my ears start burning.
A million questions went through my head in a second, like “Are they here?” and “Do they know I’m here?” and “Should I announce myself?” I act fast, assuming they aren’t there but could be pulling up any minute. I take a picture of the jacket, I go to the garage and sure enough, James’s motorcycle is there. I take a picture of that and then run back in and see cell phones stacked where they are charging in the kitchen.
I grab a phone I don’t recognize. It didn’t have a lock on it, so I immediately go to the pictures…the first one is of two people I don’t recognize, as well as my mom and James…and they’re kissing each other on the lips. I scroll a little and more of the same. My heart is pumping out of my chest at this point and I take a few quick pictures of the photos in the phone and run out of the house, not even remembering or caring what I had originally been there for.
Something I should add here: When I was seven, my mom left my dad for a doctor, who just wanted to use her and drop her like a bad habit, and my dad reluctantly took her back after she begged and pleaded. She blamed the doctor at the time. My dad later told me that at the time, he told himself he was doing it for the kids and had planned on leaving her after we graduated high school, but they did so well in between then and our graduations that he eventually forgave her and was happy in their relationship.
I remember them being separated, but I didn’t know the details until recently. Okay so anyways, I peel out of the driveway at the lake house, and drive to a secluded street in the neighborhood as I try and figure out what to do. I let my heart rate slow a bit, so I could think more clearly, and then called my little sister, trying to decide if I tell my dad and if so, how.
Up to this point, everyone just had their suspicions with no solid proof. My little sister, who is the sweetheart of the family, agrees that I needed to call dad and tell him immediately because he deserves to know, despite how bad it will hurt him. I then called my wife and she agreed but we were both worried about what he would do.
I hesitate for a bit but eventually I call my dad to tell him his wife of 25 years is cheating on him. When he answers, I just blurt it out: “James is here, I have proof, and mom is cheating on you.” I didn’t know how to put it delicately, so I just gave him the facts. He was in shock like me. He kept saying the same phrase over and over: “No way…”
After the initial shock wears off, he apologizes that I had to be the one to see it and then says he’s on his way (it’s a three-hour drive) and that he will meet up with me at my roommate’s. I immediately call my uncle (my dad’s identical twin and my other best friend) and tell him what’s going on. I tell him I’m afraid my dad is going to do something stupid.
He said he’ll make sure he doesn’t. They end up coming down together and meet me at my roommate’s house. We talk for a couple hours and come up with a plan. They switch trucks with my roommate to go incognito because he must see it for himself. My dad promises he won’t do anything stupid despite what he may see. He sneaks up there after dark, parks far away, and walks a mile through the woods with his brother and a pair of binoculars.
He hides behind some trees when he got in place and sees them on the patio with another couple drinking. They’re cuddling and kissing like they’re an old married couple and like what they are doing is not beyond messed up. It took every ounce of self-control for my dad not to run over there and go insane on them. Instead, he did the smart thing thankfully and just took pictures of them and left. Then he reaped his revenge.
The next morning, he cleared out their bank account, sent her the pictures he and I took along with a text that said, “I know everything, I’m leaving you.” I can only imagine what their reaction was like. Rest assured that the rest of their little getaway was quite stressful. The next year was a nightmare for everyone and my mom’s reaction to this solidified my disdain for her.
She dragged everyone into her nightmare and made our lives horrible. My dad and I caught her red-handed. He just wanted her to go to James and let him live in peace, but instead, she dropped James and begged my dad to take her back. My dad agreed to pay her alimony if she granted him a divorce without lawyers that would’ve drained them both financially.
She reluctantly agreed. After the divorce, my mom cried every day for a year. She moved in with my little sister in an apartment she couldn’t afford. She got on anti-depressants and went into a downward spiral that, because we loved her no matter what, took us all with her. All the lies she had told for a year began to surface more and more.
Thinking back on that motorcycle trip where I spent a weekend with this jerk made my stomach turn. I even bought that rich guy drinks. Though I despised who she was and what she had done, I was still very concerned for my mom and would listen to her sob on the phone and in front of me. She cried to my wife a lot too, which I hated.
This was my wife’s first year in the family and my mom was calling her, bawling about how cruel my dad was being to her. My mom blamed my dad’s twin brother for almost everything, saying he had taken him away from her on all our “guy hunting trips,” and he was the reason their marriage fell apart. She was truly manic. My mom’s parents and brother were disgusted with her because they loved my dad so much and they refused to talk to her about it.
So my wife, sisters, dad, and I were the ones who got the brunt of it. She tried manipulating everyone to make us think she was the victim here. It made me sick. She tried to make it seem like she was the battered wife and my dad had treated her badly. We all knew the truth and I found myself despising her more and more as a person.
My dad on the other hand went full-blown frat boy with his newly found freedom. He’s a handsome guy with money, and though my mom’s reaction was taking a toll on him in every way, he distracted himself by getting on Bumble and banging a bunch of 30-40-something year-old women, hunted every weekend, and went on Harley rides during the week to escape it all.
My mom still doesn’t know about the women and honestly, after being with the same woman for 30 years, being cheated on twice, and having every aspect of his life controlled, he deserved it and needed to get it out of his system. Anyways, getting us more towards the present, my wife and I became pregnant with our first child and the joy of it was completely overshadowed by my mom’s constant meltdowns.
I couldn’t even get them in the same room to tell all my family that they were going to have a new niece/granddaughter. For 10 months, she relentlessly berated my dad for not being able to forgive her and used my unborn child (their first grandchild) as a pawn to get him back. She told him that it would be his fault if their grandchild grew up with divorced grandparents.
It made my blood boil. After a while, and against me and my sister’s encouragement for my dad to stay strong, my dad caved and slowly started to get back with her. They sold their house and now live together in a townhome. My daughter is 17 months old now and my parents have fallen back into their relationship of my mom dominating his life, despite him trying to set strong ground rules this time.
It’s been like when a villain gets their powers back after losing them. She went from weak and broken to manipulating everyone to her will like she has always done. My wife is shy, caring, and always worried to offend my family in any way, and my mom uses this to try and boss her around when it comes to our daughter until I step in.
She’ll constantly play the guilt card about how my wife’s parents see our daughter more when they live four hours away. Uhhh yeah you psycho, they’re good people. When I talk to my mom now, there is never love in my voice. I don’t want to hate her, but her flaws are so apparent. She’s a sociopath who has to be in control of everyone.
We all love her despite this, but I am the only one who calls her out on it. My older sister barely speaks to her. My daughter is obsessed with her and it makes me happy and furious at the same time. My mom doesn’t deserve my dad, and she doesn’t deserve our forgiveness, especially since this is twice now (that we know about) that she cheated on my dad.
Not sure how to end this. Just wish my mom wasn’t such an awful person. I guess I’m thankful these events and my realization didn’t happen sooner, otherwise I wouldn’t know that there are good women out there and instead I’d probably have a very hard time trusting them. Thank god for my wife, too, who is an incredible woman.
Story credit: Reddit / Tcherry1234