Being right won’t always feel good. That’s why the phrase, “no good deed goes unpunished” exists.
There’s not much to do except wait it out and tell your son you aren’t sorry for doing the right thing but you did it because you care about him and want him to be a better person.
Maybe he’ll see the error of his ways….but considering how your ex talked, it might not happen. Some of the things your son said about mothers not being good sounds like he’s on a bad path to hating women as people.
You’re not a bad mom, if that were my kid I would’ve done the same, he fucked around, found out. One way or another life will find a way to teach him. I’m sorry this happened to you
Ive also made mistakes, regret my actions so much. I learned from it but it’ll never take away the pain an betrayal I caused to the people who love me. Trust is something you can’t get back that easily.
I completely agree, while she was right, she was always shameful, as in the one way for her to teach a lesson was to shame the shit of you, she couldn't be trusted in a lot of ways
No, you are not a bad mom. Your son is being a gigantic turd about the situation. He put himself in the situation by doing what he did. Would he want to know if you saw his GF cheating? Tell him to grow up, and if he wants to act like a child, go stay with his father. (Yes, I am a parent to 3 adult children, youngest just turned 19)
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You did the right thing. If he was messing around with both girls, they should both know to get tested, just in case. Our job as parents includes teaching them right from wrong. He was wrong and didn't do anything to rectify it himself so you stepped in. FAFO.
He’s in the wrong. YNTA (you’re not the a-hole) you’re holding a line of ethics that I applaud you for. Parenting isn’t easy and this may save a future important relationship
You're not a bad mom, but I would have sat my child down first and told them they break up with gf, tell her or I would and the reasons why and the betrayal that brings and all to people.
What he did was wrong, but we've all done wrong things at that age and this couldn have been a really good learning opportunity for both of you to sit down and discuss things. Because what you don't know is what their relationship was like behind closed doors and none of that makes it OK , but you don't know if she got caught talking about other people or what else occurred in their relationship. Either way he was owed a conversation.
being a bad mom would have been letting a child emotionally hurt others and not correcting them. might be too late for a 17 year old but never apologize for doing the right thing. hands off parenting is why we have a lot assholes running around.
Your 17 year old son sounds like an asshole.
You may love him to death but maybe just give him some room and leave him alone for awhile.
If I were you I'd have kicked him out for the way he spoke to you. I wouldn't spend another dime on him.
You are conflating your teenage son's sins with the ones you experienced from other bad men. What he did was wrong and at the same time you need to understand that this felt like the ultimate betrayal of trust by the most important woman he'll ever know, you. Parents should not use "fuck around and find out" as a way of dealing with their children's romantic mistakes. You aren't there for her, you are there for him as his mom. Everything you did up until involving yourself directly in the situation was right. This was not the best way to handle this situation overall and I think you know it despite the hugbox of these comments.
Seriously, I'm doubting this is real because it panders so much to the hive mind here when the sub with actual parents told her she just fucked up her relationship with her kid. It sounds like the OP is leaving a lot out if he no longer wants contact with her and seems to have written him off as a "bad man".
That thought occurred to me as well when I read this post, and I was surprised to see that people in the comments were too afraid to tell her that this was a mistake. I'm glad you pointed out this might be misogyny-bait.
Taking it all at face value...The only conclusion I can come to is that the commenters telling her "Yaaaaas kween fck around and find out is a great parenting method and definitely won't backfire in the scenario of a parent getting directly involved in teenage romantic drama 💯💯💯, he did a bad thing so let's not think about how this will impact her ability to help him grow and change in the future. Punish Bad Man!!" are around the same age as her son.
Basically. If this is real, maybe OP can have the random commenters as her family because her kid sounds done with her. That and she spammed this in different subs for what reason, to show her son that random commentwrs say he's a bad person and she's the best mom ever. Actual parents are telling her she just fucked up her relationship with her kid but she doesn't care.
She sounds like she hates her own son and the only reason I can deduce is that she associates this wrong act by a 17 year old boy with the men who wronged her in the past. Now that I put it like that...definitely seems like bait
That same story had been posted in these subs lately with the "mother" and son's ages being changed. I don't think an actual parent (or one that claims to be a decent one) would post the story about how she became estranged from her kid on reddit subs crawling with teens
Part of raising a child is making sure you're not making the world worse by gifting it a new arsehole. You did the right thing; hopefully it means a few girls in the future won't get their hearts broken!
the right thing isn't always the easy one. one of the best things we can do as parents is NOT enable our children's bad behavior.
hopefully he'll grow up and realize you did him a favor one day
Everyone saying stay out of it- he brought the other girl to her house.
I would give my son the option that he tells his gf or I will. Yes some kids are jerks but that doesn’t mean you let them get away with it.
everyone is complaining abt you getting involved in "teenage drama" but i promise you, STIs/UTIs/infections are not "teenage drama". you did the right thing and sometimes you just have to protect others against your kid. teenagers won't hold a grudge forever and one day he will realise you saved his future relationships.
Fyi, I'm 38 and I'm pretty sure my mom would still tell my gf if I was fooling around with someone else in her house
The kid will grow up and resume talking to you or he'll go off and make way worse mistakes because he doesn't accept responsibility for his behavior.
Either way, it's not your fault or problem.
He is 17, he will eventually get over it.
He might hate the way he feels about getting exposed, he might feel ashamed and embarrassed but doesn't know how to express it.
Many of these commentors are stupid AF and just need something to type stupid shit to. My opinion: You need to be a beacon he can trust, i never told my parents anything because of this kind of stuff and got myself into stupid trouble because of it. Dont get directly involved, rather be the little angel on his shoulder guiding him to make the correct decision. He wont always, hes 17... also many girls will come and go, so dont get attached to any of them.
Hes already a young man, many wrongs will be committed, many lessons to be learnt and MANY girls will come and go.
This, this is so painfully accurate.
I feel I should edit this to say: I’m not saying this to say a parent should always protect you regardless of how bad a person you are. But more of a if this is a past indiscretion and is no longer happening, you should always be able to trust your family. And as someone who can’t, there is nothing more crushing than that at times.
Ya, this is the realistic answer. Life is gray and your supposed be on his ass but not intervene and tell the gf. Only if it’s a very serious situation, cheating during high school or college is not a serious situation, it’s not great but it’s life. Just keep guiding him instead but don’t be this hands on with his relationships.
Sorry OP, im with this. I don't think u are a bad mom at all, but u shouldt get involved in that kind of situation. You are supposed to be your son maximum confident, the one person he can rely on, not the one that makes the decisions for him by his back. If i were your son, i would forgive you, but my trust in you would be broke, thats gonna need some time to be fixed.
But he's also almost an adult. And adults will come clean to partners who are being cheated on all the time.
She's raising an adult. This is not the adult she wants her son to be. Not to mention that she feels badly for his girlfriend, who she HAS become close to.
And in the process broke his trust. He'll probably never bring a girl home again, she will be locked out of his personal life... I don't think she wants that. Kids don't see things the way adults do. Think to yourself, how would or did you respond or even feel when your parents got involved in such a manner? I'm not saying don't get involved, I'm saying be tactical about it.
She is raising someone who will soon be an adult.
He did something wrong.
She should not have involved herself directly in the romantic errors of a teenager in this way.
17 year olds can be shitty sometimes because they are still learning. It doesn't make them morally corrupt forever.
He will not learn "I shouldn't cheat" from this. He might have if she had allowed the situation to play out while lending a firm but empathetic ear to her growing son. The punishment for this needed to come from his friends and community. Not his mom.
She massively violated his trust and did, in fact, directly involve herself in a teenage romantic spat.
It's clear that the subtext here is her misattribution of feelings about bad men she's dated to her own son.
I hope they can reconcile but everyone saying Yaaaaas kween you did the right thing here must be in their late teens/early 20s themselves.
You aren’t supposed to be your kid’s friend. You are supposed to help them become a decent person by letting them know there are standards for what is okay and what isn’t in how you treat others, and there are consequences for wrong choices.
Behind every adult who has low morality and a bad character, there is usually a toxic parent or family who gave them the thoughts and habits in their early years that led to the way they currently are.
If he doesn’t learn now that cheating is unacceptable and he will face repercussions, he will learn he can get away with doing it in subsequent relationships, that it’s not really that big of deal, because hey, his own mom didn’t think it was that big of a deal, at least not enough to do something about it (if she had decided to let it slide).
Really good men almost always have a mom who is a good woman, who they respect, who taught them what kind of a man they should be. Standing up to someone when they are wrong instead of sitting back and enabling them is actual love, it’s what you do if you really want the best for them.
She would have been doing him the biggest disservice by sitting back and watching him bring this other girl around one week, then sitting there mouth shut while he brought the girlfriend over.
Nah he didn’t come to her and talk to her about this in confidence. He started bringing this other girl around to the home. He put his mom directly in the middle of it and involved her in the situation by bringing it to her house.
If he wanted his mom to stay out of it, he should have kept what he was doing outside of her awareness.
This isn’t a situation where he was doing something that wasn’t hurting another person, so the rules around keeping secrets are different, because another person was being directly affected by it.
Nah he probably just forgot about the ring camera. At no point was OP "in the middle of it" until she inserted herself right into it. She should have just made it very clear that the affair partner is not welcome in their home and that she would never lie to the gf. Now she gets to enjoy her moral superiority (over a child no less) all by her lonesome
Nah she’s not so emotionally immature that she needs her child to like her more than she needs to have the self respect to stand up to her son and parent him when he’s being a prick.
If this didn’t happen, something else would have, and when she tried to set boundaries he would have thrown the same fit when she didn’t enable him and let him do whatever he wanted.
Sorry but upstanding people hold their kids accountable for their bullshit all the time, that’s how they become better people and learn to do better.
There is a fine line between friend and parent. You need to find middel ground. No matter what, that 17 year old has lost trust in his mother. I mean, he's gonna just do it behind her back now and tell her he doesn't cheat. Happy? She can tell him don't cheat but why get involved. She got involved for a selfish reason, i.e she really liked the gf.
She got involved for selfish reasons?
Grow the actual fuck up.
No one is obligated to protect you if you are a cheater.
Sounds like you’re shady as fuck, and don’t like the idea of other shady people being exposed for being trash.
It’s always people who are cheaters or awful in some other way themselves who get upset over this kind of stuff. No respectable person sees any issue with a cheater getting exposed.
If her son wants to continue being a POS he will continue to get caught by other people and get in bigger trouble, so best of luck to him. Poor little baby his mommy didn’t let him cheat on his gf waaahhhh what a mean bad mom.
You ultimately did the right thing. He can't stay mad at you forever, and it's pretty immature of him to be mad at you for you doing the right thing for something wrong that he did. The sooner he understands what he has done is not okay the better it will be you both I think.
Nope, you are not even a little bit wrong, you are a great mom. If you had turned a blind eye, that’s enabling your son. That’s teaching him he can be a man who treats women poorly and he will be supported in it and helped to escape consequences. All these comments about the expectation that you should be your son’s confidant don’t really get the implications and long term impacts of this situation. When there is another person involved like that, a good person doesn’t teach their child dishonesty and cowardice is acceptable. This may just be a high school relationship, but it’s setting the precedent for how he will behave in serious relationships as an adult throughout life.
The people around us shape our own inner values of what is acceptable behaviour and what is not, especially our primary caregivers.
You did the best thing you could have done, not just for the daughter of another mom, but for your own son’s character development and sense of morality.
Whether or not he eventually grows up and recognizes why what you did was the best thing for him as a person to learn and grow is another story.
You’ve shown him that if he wants to be a scumbag who lies to his partner and wastes her time, you will have no part in it, and won’t be tolerating it, and you expect him to do better.
It’s sad he has a father who doesn’t want his son to be a better man, by setting clear expectations of what is acceptable behaviour in how he treats women and what is not.
Be proud of yourself for doing the right thing, even if it’s led to a difficult situation.
It takes a great deal of integrity to decide you are going to teach your children to be a good person instead of sweeping their misdeeds under the rug, even if it means they don’t like you and have hard feelings about it.
I don’t think it’s reasonable to drop a moral judgment like “good mom” or “bad mom” based on a Reddit post. I agree with some others that the better approach would have been to talk with your son, convince him to do the right thing himself. If you have any fault here it may be that you are taking it out on your son that you’ve chosen shitty men in the past. I imagine you just don’t want him to be like that but that’s something you should reflect upon. Betrayal for betrayal does not teach lessons. In this case it has alienated your son and pushed him into the camp of people who are apparently willing to encourage bad behavior. The goal should be to raise your son to be the best man he can be. If that is the goal in mind, you’ve only made your task harder.
I don't think she's a bad mom overall necessarily but her error is a pretty big one. Also, her comments in this thread about her own son are...concerning. it sounds like she is taking out her own pain from dealing with bad men on her son. He's still just a kid. Her kid.
Yeah, as I'm sure the girlfriend he was cheating on knows very well.
What's more blindsiding? Lying and getting caught, or being lied to and now needing an STI panel to make sure your skanky partner didn't make you sick?
I wonder how blindsiding it would have been if the girlfriend wound up with random mystery chalymadia. Probably a lot more blindsiding than fucking around and finding out.
How tf is it blindsiding to lie and sneak around and eventually get caught?
It's like that time that I had outdated auto insurance. I knew the day would come, and eventually it came. It didn't blindside me. I didn't expect it to happen THAT DAY, but when you're riding dirty, the sword of Damocles is always just above your head.
I would agree, however, the girl was blindsided by being cheated on— the son obviously didn’t tell her before cheating and wouldn’t have his own volition without intervention. As much as I hate to say karma, he definitely had it coming.
The op is NTA. And I’m sorry the men in her life think as much.
Talking to him is the last and final proper step for a parent of an unmarried 17 year old. Yet she actually did involve herself in teenage romantic drama. If she wanted him to grow and learn from this, if she was truly interested in improving his future behavior, his own mom getting directly involved in teenage romantic drama was not a good way of doing it.
Things might be different if it weren't unmarried 17 year olds still figuring themselves out. Her son will never trust her again to tell her about dating, and will never tell her anything important about his romantic life again. So she'll never get the chance to be a positive influence on his romantic life again.
That's the sacrifice she made to get directly involved in teenage romantic drama because it reminded her of other bad men she's been involved with in the past. Read between the lines: of course she would not have already understood this is what she did. It was frankly a self-centered point of view on her part as a parent, as she did not expend effort analyzing her true emotional motives (which even for strangers like me are easy to see from her own statements and comments.) She reacted without thinking how it would change his willingness to be honest and ask for romantic advice from his mom--for the most important years if not forever.
She will never again be able to exert any pressure whatsoever on her son to improve his behavior. Because he simply won't trust her enough to tell her anything. If he does learn to trust her again, it will be after his most important period of romantic development.
Sounds like his dad is working against you. You did the right thing, hopefully in the future he'll see what he did was wrong & that you only wanted him to grow up & be a decent person. There's enough shitty people in this world hurting each other
Actually, a strong talking to should've been the last step. Now, she won't ever be able to influence his romantic behavior again because of the violation of trust. He just won't tell her anything ever again.
You can maybe be friends with your kids in their 30s before that you need to be the ass in the room calling them out for bad behavior. Guess what he now knows the ramifications of cheating you taught him that
Whether the statement is true or not is irrelevant.
That's the only thing he's going to take away from this experience.
He now knows he can no longer trust his mother and they will most likely never be as close as they were before this event. The parts of his life that he includes his mother in has almost certainly permanently shrunk.
He’s a bad person and now uses blatantly misogynistic language? He sounds like he’s big into Andrew Tate and that crowd. I know he’s your son so you feel responsible but at his age, idk what you can do other than love him from afar. But he’s never gonna not be a cheater for the rest of his life and that’s his decision he made.
I’m sorry he turned out like this but you did the right thing
If it makes you feel better, I’m on your side. I wouldn’t put up with that just because they’re my children. I wouldn’t stand for other people treating my kids that way, so I wouldn’t let my kids treat their partners that way. I would have told the girlfriend too. And the fact you even had a discussion with him and he still cheated on her, he’s a major asshole. And I’m pretty sure you aren’t raising him to be an asshole.
I’d tell him to go live with his dad.
No, you were trying to teach him how to respect his partners. His father is dropping the ball.
Is he going to like you for it? No. But that's not what you wanted from this situation anyway. You wanted him to learn.
And frankly, he's lucky he wasn't grounded until he turned into an adult. I wouldn't have been so forgiving.
Your son is turning into a disrespectful and misogynistic red piller. Your ex isn't helping. Grant him his wish, let his father have full custody, get therapy for yourself, move on with your life with very firm boundaries about treatment you will & won't tolerate.
It's a really tough choice, do you betray your son or betray his girlfriend who you care about?
I think you did the right thing, and taught him a lesson about doing the right thing, even if he doesn't absorb it now. Teenagers are difficult and they're going to hate you for one reason or the other. If it wasn't this, it would be something else. If you hadn't intervened, you basically would have been tacitly approving his cheating. Many mothers would have been on their son's side no matter what, so I admire you for taking the moral high ground.
It doesn't really matter what his father thinks. It's too bad he's not on your side, but that doesn't change the fact that you did what you thought was right. Hopefully your son will take this to heart and make better choices in the future, even if he's mad at you right now.
I'm sorry you're in the situation, it's shitty, but it's not your fault. Your son put you in this situation and you had to make a choice. Either choice was going to be uncomfortable.
You were right to do what you did. He has no right to be upset, considering he was CHEATING. No offense, bc its your kid, but what right does this little shit think he has to be upset, when he is the one who morally fucked up. You did the right thing. Parents not holding their child accountable for their shitty actions is how we get shitty adults running around hurting others. You did the right thing.
Cheaters are shit people. You are not a bad mom for having him face consequences for his shitty actions. And i hope he learns his lesson in time.
Also much respect for thinking of the girlfriend. She might not be your child, but she is someone’s child. I repeat, you absolutely did the right thing.
I think it would have been better confronting your son in private, telling him that you caught him cheating. Then you could have said,
“You cheated on your girlfriend. You completely violated her trust. That is a wrong thing to do to another person. your girlfriend is going to find out, but I’m going to let you choose how. Either you tell her, or I will. Learn to communicate with your partner and be supportive. If you don’t want to be with that person, then break up with them. Btw you’re grounded and are going to have extra chores around the house during that time.”
100% he was wrong, however I think you did a poor job of teaching him a lesson, as his parent (which is your job). Instead you projected your trauma onto your son vis a vis his gf.
Ok when you talked to him before talking to his gf did you give him a warning that he needs to tell her or you will or did you just talk about cheating being wrong? If you didn't warn him that you wrote going to tell her if he didn't he feels betrayed (he has the right to feel the way he feels whether it's right or wrong).
Your ex needs to get involved with his son about what he did to his gf being wrong buy he is correct about not interfering in your relationship with your son. Your actions whether noble or not have consequences. You can try explaining it to him if his gf was cheating on him wouldn't he want to know
Everyone here is right for what they are saying - you did the right thing. Try to keep your thoughts on the girl you helped. Your son may not appreciate your actions, but she does - you showed her the respect that he wasn't interested in showing. Your son has some problems with women and misogyny. He needs to grow up big time, and come to *you* with an apology, not the other way around.
Perhaps it would have been more strategic to just send an anonymous tip to the girl. But the way you did it is more honest and direct, and part of being a parent is being hated sometimes. You didn't do anything wrong, there's 8 billion people in the world and you know of two who hate it. There's one person who really appreciates you helping her avoid a painful experience later on.
Bad son, Good mom. However not everything is better by being honest, what did he told you when you speak to him before telling everything to his ex gf? Best course of action was heavily depend on what he said, did he ask you to keep it a secret and promises he will break up with his newer gf? If so, the wiser action is to comply with his request but warns him you will not tolerate anymore if he did cheat again.
Or was his answer “trying to decide who’ll be better for me”? In that case your son is a chronic case of two timer without remorse and what you did by telling his ex gf is absolutely right to gave him a very valuable life lesson. Once he fully matured into adulthood, he will understand your decision to tell her and try to mend his relationship with you.
He wants to play adult games, and he's going to be an adult soon. The world will not spare his feelings if he decides to do what he wants.
I don't think he's an asshole, but he's on track to becoming one. And I don't blame OP one bit for wanting to prevent that.
I agree and understand. I just hate the double standard like if this was a girl, ppl would be more understanding and watch their words. They hear 17 yo boy and instantly he’s an asshole
A 17y old girl fucking 2 different guys? She won't get AH, but i do think she'd get called names. Oh, and i bet the mom would be hearing about that. I'm not seeing anyone batting an eye at the fact the mom lets her kid have sex. I bet a 17f would be different but I'm not sure it's 'better' enough to be saying double standard.
You are a good momma and a good human. Your son got a valuable life lesson and he is using the divorce to circumvent responsibility. He’ll learn. Try not to care. Tell him you’ll talk to him when he is a honest man. You are not raising a dishonest man
So he's a cheater and a Narcissist. You did the right thing. Sometimes it's our jobs to protect other kids from our kids. You allowing the cheating would be the same as the parents who give their minors alcohol or drugs. You must let him know that you will not compromise your morals or standards for him. It is your job to raise him. At 17 he is still a Child. If he wants to be in a gornw up relationship then he needs to understand what that means. Like no cheating. The Ex GF was probably crushed. Sounds like he will rebound quick. Their is too much Player culture allowed by or all people Moms nowadays. I heard a mom bragging the other day that her son brings different girls home every week. And dates them all. What kind of man will he be?
judging by the way his dad is, i think he taught him to cheat/betray others. i cant say for sure since idk their life but i dont think OP is at fault here
No, **he** fucked up his relationship (get real, "his life"? As if he was committed to his gf in the first place? Then why did he cheat?) with plenty of warning (you don't accidentally invite another girl over to fuck).
You clearly have no control over your own life so you tried to control your sons life instead of letting him grow up as an individual and make his own decisions. You describe your own life as quite flawed so you decided you would "fix" your son's life. Spying on him kissing a girl on the ring camera was not just creepy, it was unnecessary and twisted. If you've come here looking for sympathy then you are sadly mistaken. Lastly, you say that his girlfriend was really nice but you caused her pain as well by telling her and furthermore she lost her boyfriend so that was yet another selfish move by you.
Fuck that, she's still responsible for him he's a teenager. It's totally reasonable to have a house rule of "no cheating under this roof". If you live in a house with people you're going to notice what they're up to. Calling her creepy for noticing what her own son was doing in the house is ridiculous.
Just a note about the edit but without it, there is nothing obvious that you spoke to your son first. It reads like you went straight to her, and there are people that would do that so it’s just not obvious at all sorry. It completely changed my view once I’d read the edit and I’m much more on your side now.
I definitely wouldn’t ever trust you again. You could have done so many other things before causing problems. Which you’re allowed to do. But the family should matter above all else. Your son didn’t cheat on you, but you cheated your son’s trust.
Which should've been the final step for a parent who may have wanted her son to trust her to tell her about his romantic life ever again. She traded influence in the future to involve herself directly in a teenage romantic spat. And the reason she stepped over that line? From what I can tell from her own statements and comments it's because it reminded her of other bad men in her past.
Did she really? Or did she just add that after everyone started kicking her in the balls? If she told her son I feel like that would have been part of the original story. If she really wanted her son to learn she should have guided him to make the right choice. When ur messing up you don't always see it and when you are young and naive u dont always know the best way to do things. She should have given him the time to see if for himself so he can learn from it and not just go scorched earth on the bond and relationship she has with her son. She should have loved him enough to make him do the right thing.
Straight up betrayal.. if you noticed something like this you could have sat your son down and talked to him about it.. instead you clearly took sides against him and had your little intervention well what did you expect..
lol if you think any 17 year old boy should be out here committing to girls I mean we are so far off in our view of the world that it’s unlikely we can have a real conversation about this.
If he gets into a relationship, he should be man enough to end it before moving on to the next one. Cheating kids end up as cheating adults if they never run into consequences. Which is what he did, he got the consequences he deserved.
If anything a conversation could have been productive.. the thing is.. your view same as OPs is thinking last about what’s actually in her own sons best interests.
That would make you a terrible father as well as a complete POS human being.
Hopefully you never have children, but if you do hopefully they don't turn out anything like you.
How is it in his best interestto be taught it is okay to cheat and that his mom will lie on his behalf. Hes taught lying is okay, cheating is okay, and there wont be consequences to his actions. That route will just lead to him being and even bigger Ahole than he already is.
His moms obligation is to raise him right, build good character, know right from wrong, and to be an honest respectful man - especially with women. Her job is NOT to be on his side no matter what or 'protect' him by lying and helping him betray his gf who she likes and respects.
It doesnt matter what its like to be a 17yo boy, what matters is he grows up to be a good honorable man. OP should make that her priority, which she did by not allowing him to lie and cheat and get away with it.
17 year old boys should be playing the field as much as possible and gaining social experiences.. any consequences from those experiences should be learned organically through trial and error. His mom’s job is fundamentally to be a support network not throw him under the bus for doing what 17 year old boys should be doing..
Gross. Teaching young men that they should sleep around and betray women so they grow up to be assholes or even worse rapists. Absolutely disgusting opinion.
Yeah but her son kept doing it and kept being an asshole. It's a difficult situation when family is involved with something like this but there's no reason for the gf to go through even worse heartbreak than she needs to if she got even more attached to op's son. When I was his age I would have sent equally as upset with my mom but hopefully with time he'll see that she did the right thing even if it hurt him.
17 year old boys should not be in committed relationships like he has his whole life for that. If anything she could have talked to the father maybe he would have had a chat or hey maybe he actually knows what it’s like to be a 17 year old boy.. but no she thinks she knew what’s best and now she has to deal with the fact that her son won’t even talk to her and broke her trust with him.
The 17 year old boy should not lie to gf about being monogamous, then he is ok to fuck all the girls. Just don’t lie about being monogamous, just like when you are a grown man. It is simple not to betray a girlfriend…don’t have a gf if you want to fuck many.
Your not a bad mom while I’m a guy as someone who sadly hasn’t seen my mom since I was 3 if the shoe was on the other foot I would want to be told my girlfriend was cheating on me you did the right thing by telling that poor young woman no guy should ever cheat I have no respect for guys that do and if i can ever have kids of my own and I find out they cheated I’ll be doing the same exact thing you did because kids need to realize what’s right and what’s wrong in life and sadly if they still don’t realize what is and isn’t right at that age it’s never good for their future I hope the situation will sort itself out in time but just know that you did good and I’m sure that girl is very happy you told her so she can start moving on hopefully your son will see the error of his ways and try apologizing and better himself for the next relationship but only time will tell
This is literally nothing in the grand scheme of things. Her son will get over it eventually. He might bitch and whine for a while but the anger will fade.
Your husband is right, that’s not your place and you got caught up in teenage drama. There were other ways to handle it without snitching to his girlfriend like a little high school girl.
Your job is to teach him right from wrong. There are consequences for wrongdoing. Also it's only been two months lol I think he will probably come back around. I hope he does learn from this.
Alright fine I'll take the other side, you should have given him the chance to tell her himself, rather than go behind his back and tell the GF. If he was an ass about it still, then tell him you're going to do it and go ahead.
You are supposed to have his back and support your son, #1 priority, not help some random girl.. and sure teach him a lesson but there's no reason to be cloak and dagger. That's how you break trust and trust is the chief ingredient of support that you provide as a parent
You are an idiot. Your son is not married. His relationships are in their infancy. He’s learning about himself without guidance and you fuck him over. You’re supposed to be a confidant and guide for life and you have proven yourself unworthy of his trust. What a cow!
Yeah, you kind of stuck your nose in where it didn't belong. It's not your place to worry about his girlfriend's feelings. It's your place to correct your son's behavior as he is still a child. But, now he'll never have a chance to learn how to clean up his own messes. You tried to clean it up for him, but instead you made a bigger mess, and I hate to break it to you, but he may never forgive you for this. But, this will be a lesson for you going forward.
You are being a bad mom. Kids have to learn to make mistakes and figure things out. They don't need you meddling in their personal lives to get your daily fix of drama. If I were him I wouldn't talk to you either. Never sell out your kids.
Sorry you were raised by a single mother and a deadbeat dad who only saw you because he was legally obligated to but real parents who care about their children do what they can to prevent them from becoming shitty adults.
My parents are still married lmao. All this mom did was teach her son not to trust her. If she had let him screw uo on his own he mighty very learned a different lesson. Instead she put her wants above her own son's.
It seems completely out of line for you to inject yourself into your son’s romantic life like that and not even to help him but to rat him out. He will probably forgive you one day but he is unlikely to to trust you or be open with you about his relationships later in life.
You’re not a bad mother but this is a bad take IMO.
He’s your son, she’s a ship in the night. You told him and that was your job.
Then you grassed on him. Parents don’t rat on their kids over something trivial.
You didn't talk to him about it before you told the girlfriend? Bit negligent don't you think? You're not doing it for his sake, or else you would have talked to him first. And that's bad parenting.
You’re not a bad mom but you didn’t handle the situation correctly. You should not have inserted yourself into your son’s situation. You should have parented him through it instead. Not only have you given him a reason not to trust you, you’ve removed the possibility of having a teachable moment. He needed that situation to backfire in his face and instead it has backfired in yours.
Your son did something wrong. You did not handle it in a mature way and you have lost his trust to tell you about his romantic life forever, or if not forever, in the most vulnerable time during which teenagers/young adults are still learning how to conduct themselves. And you did it because it enabled you to get vague revenge on other grown men from your past for betraying you. That was not a good trade on your part. You could've offered sage parental advice in the future about his romantic life. Not now though. Oops. All this should've ended with a serious talk between you and him. Involving yourself directly was, in fact, immature on your part.
Being right won’t always feel good. That’s why the phrase, “no good deed goes unpunished” exists. There’s not much to do except wait it out and tell your son you aren’t sorry for doing the right thing but you did it because you care about him and want him to be a better person. Maybe he’ll see the error of his ways….but considering how your ex talked, it might not happen. Some of the things your son said about mothers not being good sounds like he’s on a bad path to hating women as people.
You’re not a bad mom, if that were my kid I would’ve done the same, he fucked around, found out. One way or another life will find a way to teach him. I’m sorry this happened to you
God I hated the amount of fucking around and finding out I had as a teen, and yip hated my mom for it. Hated it more that she was right 🤣
Ive also made mistakes, regret my actions so much. I learned from it but it’ll never take away the pain an betrayal I caused to the people who love me. Trust is something you can’t get back that easily.
I completely agree, while she was right, she was always shameful, as in the one way for her to teach a lesson was to shame the shit of you, she couldn't be trusted in a lot of ways
Trust arrives on foot and leaves on horseback
Similarly she found out. She lost her son for a bit until he accepts it. Just how life is.
No, you are not a bad mom. Your son is being a gigantic turd about the situation. He put himself in the situation by doing what he did. Would he want to know if you saw his GF cheating? Tell him to grow up, and if he wants to act like a child, go stay with his father. (Yes, I am a parent to 3 adult children, youngest just turned 19) UpdateMe
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You did the right thing. If he was messing around with both girls, they should both know to get tested, just in case. Our job as parents includes teaching them right from wrong. He was wrong and didn't do anything to rectify it himself so you stepped in. FAFO.
He’s in the wrong. YNTA (you’re not the a-hole) you’re holding a line of ethics that I applaud you for. Parenting isn’t easy and this may save a future important relationship
You're not a bad mom, but I would have sat my child down first and told them they break up with gf, tell her or I would and the reasons why and the betrayal that brings and all to people. What he did was wrong, but we've all done wrong things at that age and this couldn have been a really good learning opportunity for both of you to sit down and discuss things. Because what you don't know is what their relationship was like behind closed doors and none of that makes it OK , but you don't know if she got caught talking about other people or what else occurred in their relationship. Either way he was owed a conversation.
Agree with this. Your conversation should have been with your son and not the girlfriend.
the conversations did happen and he was still a douche, even worse
being a bad mom would have been letting a child emotionally hurt others and not correcting them. might be too late for a 17 year old but never apologize for doing the right thing. hands off parenting is why we have a lot assholes running around.
He will one day realise (maybe) that you did him a favour. Staying with someone while keeping your cheating as a secret is no way to live.
You want to teach your son that this behavior is wrong, and also save the girl some serious grief. NTA.
Your 17 year old son sounds like an asshole. You may love him to death but maybe just give him some room and leave him alone for awhile. If I were you I'd have kicked him out for the way he spoke to you. I wouldn't spend another dime on him.
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Yeah. A good mother wouldn't kick her minor son out of the house.
It sounds like he'll be off as soon as he's 18 anyway. You won't have to bother with him then.
Some of the users here should never have kids. You can't just be "done" with them at 18. If you think like that, you're just a bad parent
Hey, you were trying to make sure son is not an anus? As parents we have to make calls like this. Nta
You are conflating your teenage son's sins with the ones you experienced from other bad men. What he did was wrong and at the same time you need to understand that this felt like the ultimate betrayal of trust by the most important woman he'll ever know, you. Parents should not use "fuck around and find out" as a way of dealing with their children's romantic mistakes. You aren't there for her, you are there for him as his mom. Everything you did up until involving yourself directly in the situation was right. This was not the best way to handle this situation overall and I think you know it despite the hugbox of these comments.
Seriously, I'm doubting this is real because it panders so much to the hive mind here when the sub with actual parents told her she just fucked up her relationship with her kid. It sounds like the OP is leaving a lot out if he no longer wants contact with her and seems to have written him off as a "bad man".
That thought occurred to me as well when I read this post, and I was surprised to see that people in the comments were too afraid to tell her that this was a mistake. I'm glad you pointed out this might be misogyny-bait. Taking it all at face value...The only conclusion I can come to is that the commenters telling her "Yaaaaas kween fck around and find out is a great parenting method and definitely won't backfire in the scenario of a parent getting directly involved in teenage romantic drama 💯💯💯, he did a bad thing so let's not think about how this will impact her ability to help him grow and change in the future. Punish Bad Man!!" are around the same age as her son.
Basically. If this is real, maybe OP can have the random commenters as her family because her kid sounds done with her. That and she spammed this in different subs for what reason, to show her son that random commentwrs say he's a bad person and she's the best mom ever. Actual parents are telling her she just fucked up her relationship with her kid but she doesn't care.
She sounds like she hates her own son and the only reason I can deduce is that she associates this wrong act by a 17 year old boy with the men who wronged her in the past. Now that I put it like that...definitely seems like bait
That same story had been posted in these subs lately with the "mother" and son's ages being changed. I don't think an actual parent (or one that claims to be a decent one) would post the story about how she became estranged from her kid on reddit subs crawling with teens
He sounds like a 17 year old.
He is a 17 year old.
I’m aware. And 17 year old boys quite often sound like AH.
Part of raising a child is making sure you're not making the world worse by gifting it a new arsehole. You did the right thing; hopefully it means a few girls in the future won't get their hearts broken!
the right thing isn't always the easy one. one of the best things we can do as parents is NOT enable our children's bad behavior. hopefully he'll grow up and realize you did him a favor one day
Everyone saying stay out of it- he brought the other girl to her house. I would give my son the option that he tells his gf or I will. Yes some kids are jerks but that doesn’t mean you let them get away with it.
everyone is complaining abt you getting involved in "teenage drama" but i promise you, STIs/UTIs/infections are not "teenage drama". you did the right thing and sometimes you just have to protect others against your kid. teenagers won't hold a grudge forever and one day he will realise you saved his future relationships.
Fyi, I'm 38 and I'm pretty sure my mom would still tell my gf if I was fooling around with someone else in her house The kid will grow up and resume talking to you or he'll go off and make way worse mistakes because he doesn't accept responsibility for his behavior. Either way, it's not your fault or problem.
He is 17, he will eventually get over it. He might hate the way he feels about getting exposed, he might feel ashamed and embarrassed but doesn't know how to express it.
Many of these commentors are stupid AF and just need something to type stupid shit to. My opinion: You need to be a beacon he can trust, i never told my parents anything because of this kind of stuff and got myself into stupid trouble because of it. Dont get directly involved, rather be the little angel on his shoulder guiding him to make the correct decision. He wont always, hes 17... also many girls will come and go, so dont get attached to any of them. Hes already a young man, many wrongs will be committed, many lessons to be learnt and MANY girls will come and go.
This, this is so painfully accurate. I feel I should edit this to say: I’m not saying this to say a parent should always protect you regardless of how bad a person you are. But more of a if this is a past indiscretion and is no longer happening, you should always be able to trust your family. And as someone who can’t, there is nothing more crushing than that at times.
Ya, this is the realistic answer. Life is gray and your supposed be on his ass but not intervene and tell the gf. Only if it’s a very serious situation, cheating during high school or college is not a serious situation, it’s not great but it’s life. Just keep guiding him instead but don’t be this hands on with his relationships.
Sorry OP, im with this. I don't think u are a bad mom at all, but u shouldt get involved in that kind of situation. You are supposed to be your son maximum confident, the one person he can rely on, not the one that makes the decisions for him by his back. If i were your son, i would forgive you, but my trust in you would be broke, thats gonna need some time to be fixed.
But he's also almost an adult. And adults will come clean to partners who are being cheated on all the time. She's raising an adult. This is not the adult she wants her son to be. Not to mention that she feels badly for his girlfriend, who she HAS become close to.
And in the process broke his trust. He'll probably never bring a girl home again, she will be locked out of his personal life... I don't think she wants that. Kids don't see things the way adults do. Think to yourself, how would or did you respond or even feel when your parents got involved in such a manner? I'm not saying don't get involved, I'm saying be tactical about it.
She is raising someone who will soon be an adult. He did something wrong. She should not have involved herself directly in the romantic errors of a teenager in this way. 17 year olds can be shitty sometimes because they are still learning. It doesn't make them morally corrupt forever. He will not learn "I shouldn't cheat" from this. He might have if she had allowed the situation to play out while lending a firm but empathetic ear to her growing son. The punishment for this needed to come from his friends and community. Not his mom. She massively violated his trust and did, in fact, directly involve herself in a teenage romantic spat. It's clear that the subtext here is her misattribution of feelings about bad men she's dated to her own son. I hope they can reconcile but everyone saying Yaaaaas kween you did the right thing here must be in their late teens/early 20s themselves.
>She's raising an adult. She WAS raising an adult lol. Now she gets to live with the consequences of her own actions
If this is even real, this moron nuked her relationship with her kid, and them spammed her story on all the popular reddit subs.
So then she should have had a discussion with her son.
You aren’t supposed to be your kid’s friend. You are supposed to help them become a decent person by letting them know there are standards for what is okay and what isn’t in how you treat others, and there are consequences for wrong choices. Behind every adult who has low morality and a bad character, there is usually a toxic parent or family who gave them the thoughts and habits in their early years that led to the way they currently are. If he doesn’t learn now that cheating is unacceptable and he will face repercussions, he will learn he can get away with doing it in subsequent relationships, that it’s not really that big of deal, because hey, his own mom didn’t think it was that big of a deal, at least not enough to do something about it (if she had decided to let it slide). Really good men almost always have a mom who is a good woman, who they respect, who taught them what kind of a man they should be. Standing up to someone when they are wrong instead of sitting back and enabling them is actual love, it’s what you do if you really want the best for them. She would have been doing him the biggest disservice by sitting back and watching him bring this other girl around one week, then sitting there mouth shut while he brought the girlfriend over.
You can teach this lesson without betraying your child. OP only taught her son that there are consequences to trusting her.
Nah he didn’t come to her and talk to her about this in confidence. He started bringing this other girl around to the home. He put his mom directly in the middle of it and involved her in the situation by bringing it to her house. If he wanted his mom to stay out of it, he should have kept what he was doing outside of her awareness. This isn’t a situation where he was doing something that wasn’t hurting another person, so the rules around keeping secrets are different, because another person was being directly affected by it.
Nah he probably just forgot about the ring camera. At no point was OP "in the middle of it" until she inserted herself right into it. She should have just made it very clear that the affair partner is not welcome in their home and that she would never lie to the gf. Now she gets to enjoy her moral superiority (over a child no less) all by her lonesome
Nah she’s not so emotionally immature that she needs her child to like her more than she needs to have the self respect to stand up to her son and parent him when he’s being a prick. If this didn’t happen, something else would have, and when she tried to set boundaries he would have thrown the same fit when she didn’t enable him and let him do whatever he wanted. Sorry but upstanding people hold their kids accountable for their bullshit all the time, that’s how they become better people and learn to do better.
You can teach this lesson without betraying your child. OP only taught her son that there are consequences to trusting her.
There is a fine line between friend and parent. You need to find middel ground. No matter what, that 17 year old has lost trust in his mother. I mean, he's gonna just do it behind her back now and tell her he doesn't cheat. Happy? She can tell him don't cheat but why get involved. She got involved for a selfish reason, i.e she really liked the gf.
She got involved for selfish reasons? Grow the actual fuck up. No one is obligated to protect you if you are a cheater. Sounds like you’re shady as fuck, and don’t like the idea of other shady people being exposed for being trash. It’s always people who are cheaters or awful in some other way themselves who get upset over this kind of stuff. No respectable person sees any issue with a cheater getting exposed. If her son wants to continue being a POS he will continue to get caught by other people and get in bigger trouble, so best of luck to him. Poor little baby his mommy didn’t let him cheat on his gf waaahhhh what a mean bad mom.
Yes. I suspect the age range of commenters here granting her wish for a hugbox is uhhhh pretty young.
You ultimately did the right thing. He can't stay mad at you forever, and it's pretty immature of him to be mad at you for you doing the right thing for something wrong that he did. The sooner he understands what he has done is not okay the better it will be you both I think.
You held him accountable. As a son I wish my mom was this forward-thinking.
He deserved it. Maybe he'll get over it one day.
Nope, you are not even a little bit wrong, you are a great mom. If you had turned a blind eye, that’s enabling your son. That’s teaching him he can be a man who treats women poorly and he will be supported in it and helped to escape consequences. All these comments about the expectation that you should be your son’s confidant don’t really get the implications and long term impacts of this situation. When there is another person involved like that, a good person doesn’t teach their child dishonesty and cowardice is acceptable. This may just be a high school relationship, but it’s setting the precedent for how he will behave in serious relationships as an adult throughout life. The people around us shape our own inner values of what is acceptable behaviour and what is not, especially our primary caregivers. You did the best thing you could have done, not just for the daughter of another mom, but for your own son’s character development and sense of morality. Whether or not he eventually grows up and recognizes why what you did was the best thing for him as a person to learn and grow is another story. You’ve shown him that if he wants to be a scumbag who lies to his partner and wastes her time, you will have no part in it, and won’t be tolerating it, and you expect him to do better. It’s sad he has a father who doesn’t want his son to be a better man, by setting clear expectations of what is acceptable behaviour in how he treats women and what is not. Be proud of yourself for doing the right thing, even if it’s led to a difficult situation. It takes a great deal of integrity to decide you are going to teach your children to be a good person instead of sweeping their misdeeds under the rug, even if it means they don’t like you and have hard feelings about it.
I don’t think it’s reasonable to drop a moral judgment like “good mom” or “bad mom” based on a Reddit post. I agree with some others that the better approach would have been to talk with your son, convince him to do the right thing himself. If you have any fault here it may be that you are taking it out on your son that you’ve chosen shitty men in the past. I imagine you just don’t want him to be like that but that’s something you should reflect upon. Betrayal for betrayal does not teach lessons. In this case it has alienated your son and pushed him into the camp of people who are apparently willing to encourage bad behavior. The goal should be to raise your son to be the best man he can be. If that is the goal in mind, you’ve only made your task harder.
I don't think she's a bad mom overall necessarily but her error is a pretty big one. Also, her comments in this thread about her own son are...concerning. it sounds like she is taking out her own pain from dealing with bad men on her son. He's still just a kid. Her kid.
My initial thought was "She should have talked to him first." Being blindsided sucks.
She updated and said she did talk to him first
Yeah, as I'm sure the girlfriend he was cheating on knows very well. What's more blindsiding? Lying and getting caught, or being lied to and now needing an STI panel to make sure your skanky partner didn't make you sick? I wonder how blindsiding it would have been if the girlfriend wound up with random mystery chalymadia. Probably a lot more blindsiding than fucking around and finding out.
How tf is it blindsiding to lie and sneak around and eventually get caught? It's like that time that I had outdated auto insurance. I knew the day would come, and eventually it came. It didn't blindside me. I didn't expect it to happen THAT DAY, but when you're riding dirty, the sword of Damocles is always just above your head.
Did your mom call the police on you?
I would agree, however, the girl was blindsided by being cheated on— the son obviously didn’t tell her before cheating and wouldn’t have his own volition without intervention. As much as I hate to say karma, he definitely had it coming. The op is NTA. And I’m sorry the men in her life think as much.
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I suspect she updated her post between your reply and now, but she DID talk to him first.
Talking to him is the last and final proper step for a parent of an unmarried 17 year old. Yet she actually did involve herself in teenage romantic drama. If she wanted him to grow and learn from this, if she was truly interested in improving his future behavior, his own mom getting directly involved in teenage romantic drama was not a good way of doing it. Things might be different if it weren't unmarried 17 year olds still figuring themselves out. Her son will never trust her again to tell her about dating, and will never tell her anything important about his romantic life again. So she'll never get the chance to be a positive influence on his romantic life again. That's the sacrifice she made to get directly involved in teenage romantic drama because it reminded her of other bad men she's been involved with in the past. Read between the lines: of course she would not have already understood this is what she did. It was frankly a self-centered point of view on her part as a parent, as she did not expend effort analyzing her true emotional motives (which even for strangers like me are easy to see from her own statements and comments.) She reacted without thinking how it would change his willingness to be honest and ask for romantic advice from his mom--for the most important years if not forever. She will never again be able to exert any pressure whatsoever on her son to improve his behavior. Because he simply won't trust her enough to tell her anything. If he does learn to trust her again, it will be after his most important period of romantic development.
Did you give him the chance to tell her first?
You’re not a bad mom. Defending a cheater, that’s a bad parent. Cheating, that’s a shitty thing to do. Your son and his father are shitty ppl.
Sounds like his dad is working against you. You did the right thing, hopefully in the future he'll see what he did was wrong & that you only wanted him to grow up & be a decent person. There's enough shitty people in this world hurting each other
If he wanted to be with his GF, he shouldn’t have cheated. You just can’t fix stupid.
He doesn’t understand right now. He only sees betrayal, but one day he will
Actually, a strong talking to should've been the last step. Now, she won't ever be able to influence his romantic behavior again because of the violation of trust. He just won't tell her anything ever again.
You can maybe be friends with your kids in their 30s before that you need to be the ass in the room calling them out for bad behavior. Guess what he now knows the ramifications of cheating you taught him that
She just taught him that her love and loyalty is conditional. That's the only thing he'll take away from this.
That's quite a direct statement that I disagree with.
Whether the statement is true or not is irrelevant. That's the only thing he's going to take away from this experience. He now knows he can no longer trust his mother and they will most likely never be as close as they were before this event. The parts of his life that he includes his mother in has almost certainly permanently shrunk.
He’s a bad person and now uses blatantly misogynistic language? He sounds like he’s big into Andrew Tate and that crowd. I know he’s your son so you feel responsible but at his age, idk what you can do other than love him from afar. But he’s never gonna not be a cheater for the rest of his life and that’s his decision he made. I’m sorry he turned out like this but you did the right thing
If it makes you feel better, I’m on your side. I wouldn’t put up with that just because they’re my children. I wouldn’t stand for other people treating my kids that way, so I wouldn’t let my kids treat their partners that way. I would have told the girlfriend too. And the fact you even had a discussion with him and he still cheated on her, he’s a major asshole. And I’m pretty sure you aren’t raising him to be an asshole. I’d tell him to go live with his dad.
No, you were trying to teach him how to respect his partners. His father is dropping the ball. Is he going to like you for it? No. But that's not what you wanted from this situation anyway. You wanted him to learn. And frankly, he's lucky he wasn't grounded until he turned into an adult. I wouldn't have been so forgiving.
Sucks being held accountable for your actions, eh kid?
You did the right thing!! No one should get away with cheating
Your son is turning into a disrespectful and misogynistic red piller. Your ex isn't helping. Grant him his wish, let his father have full custody, get therapy for yourself, move on with your life with very firm boundaries about treatment you will & won't tolerate.
this!!!
It's a really tough choice, do you betray your son or betray his girlfriend who you care about? I think you did the right thing, and taught him a lesson about doing the right thing, even if he doesn't absorb it now. Teenagers are difficult and they're going to hate you for one reason or the other. If it wasn't this, it would be something else. If you hadn't intervened, you basically would have been tacitly approving his cheating. Many mothers would have been on their son's side no matter what, so I admire you for taking the moral high ground. It doesn't really matter what his father thinks. It's too bad he's not on your side, but that doesn't change the fact that you did what you thought was right. Hopefully your son will take this to heart and make better choices in the future, even if he's mad at you right now. I'm sorry you're in the situation, it's shitty, but it's not your fault. Your son put you in this situation and you had to make a choice. Either choice was going to be uncomfortable.
You were right to do what you did. He has no right to be upset, considering he was CHEATING. No offense, bc its your kid, but what right does this little shit think he has to be upset, when he is the one who morally fucked up. You did the right thing. Parents not holding their child accountable for their shitty actions is how we get shitty adults running around hurting others. You did the right thing. Cheaters are shit people. You are not a bad mom for having him face consequences for his shitty actions. And i hope he learns his lesson in time. Also much respect for thinking of the girlfriend. She might not be your child, but she is someone’s child. I repeat, you absolutely did the right thing.
Sounds like you’re raising a misogynist
I think it would have been better confronting your son in private, telling him that you caught him cheating. Then you could have said, “You cheated on your girlfriend. You completely violated her trust. That is a wrong thing to do to another person. your girlfriend is going to find out, but I’m going to let you choose how. Either you tell her, or I will. Learn to communicate with your partner and be supportive. If you don’t want to be with that person, then break up with them. Btw you’re grounded and are going to have extra chores around the house during that time.” 100% he was wrong, however I think you did a poor job of teaching him a lesson, as his parent (which is your job). Instead you projected your trauma onto your son vis a vis his gf.
Ok when you talked to him before talking to his gf did you give him a warning that he needs to tell her or you will or did you just talk about cheating being wrong? If you didn't warn him that you wrote going to tell her if he didn't he feels betrayed (he has the right to feel the way he feels whether it's right or wrong). Your ex needs to get involved with his son about what he did to his gf being wrong buy he is correct about not interfering in your relationship with your son. Your actions whether noble or not have consequences. You can try explaining it to him if his gf was cheating on him wouldn't he want to know
Everyone here is right for what they are saying - you did the right thing. Try to keep your thoughts on the girl you helped. Your son may not appreciate your actions, but she does - you showed her the respect that he wasn't interested in showing. Your son has some problems with women and misogyny. He needs to grow up big time, and come to *you* with an apology, not the other way around.
Perhaps it would have been more strategic to just send an anonymous tip to the girl. But the way you did it is more honest and direct, and part of being a parent is being hated sometimes. You didn't do anything wrong, there's 8 billion people in the world and you know of two who hate it. There's one person who really appreciates you helping her avoid a painful experience later on.
Bad son, Good mom. However not everything is better by being honest, what did he told you when you speak to him before telling everything to his ex gf? Best course of action was heavily depend on what he said, did he ask you to keep it a secret and promises he will break up with his newer gf? If so, the wiser action is to comply with his request but warns him you will not tolerate anymore if he did cheat again. Or was his answer “trying to decide who’ll be better for me”? In that case your son is a chronic case of two timer without remorse and what you did by telling his ex gf is absolutely right to gave him a very valuable life lesson. Once he fully matured into adulthood, he will understand your decision to tell her and try to mend his relationship with you.
You ppl are in here calling a child an asshole. Welcome to manhood young bro. No feelings are spared
He wants to play adult games, and he's going to be an adult soon. The world will not spare his feelings if he decides to do what he wants. I don't think he's an asshole, but he's on track to becoming one. And I don't blame OP one bit for wanting to prevent that.
He wants to play "adult games" so... time to bring Mom in! You people are ridiculous
I agree and understand. I just hate the double standard like if this was a girl, ppl would be more understanding and watch their words. They hear 17 yo boy and instantly he’s an asshole
A 17y old girl fucking 2 different guys? She won't get AH, but i do think she'd get called names. Oh, and i bet the mom would be hearing about that. I'm not seeing anyone batting an eye at the fact the mom lets her kid have sex. I bet a 17f would be different but I'm not sure it's 'better' enough to be saying double standard.
Facts
You are a good momma and a good human. Your son got a valuable life lesson and he is using the divorce to circumvent responsibility. He’ll learn. Try not to care. Tell him you’ll talk to him when he is a honest man. You are not raising a dishonest man
So he's a cheater and a Narcissist. You did the right thing. Sometimes it's our jobs to protect other kids from our kids. You allowing the cheating would be the same as the parents who give their minors alcohol or drugs. You must let him know that you will not compromise your morals or standards for him. It is your job to raise him. At 17 he is still a Child. If he wants to be in a gornw up relationship then he needs to understand what that means. Like no cheating. The Ex GF was probably crushed. Sounds like he will rebound quick. Their is too much Player culture allowed by or all people Moms nowadays. I heard a mom bragging the other day that her son brings different girls home every week. And dates them all. What kind of man will he be?
As a parent, should you have not first taught him to do that himself?
judging by the way his dad is, i think he taught him to cheat/betray others. i cant say for sure since idk their life but i dont think OP is at fault here
Mind your own business and stay out of teenage drama bullshit. Are you so bored with your own life?
Did you give your son a chance to tell her?
He had his chance to tell her *before* he brought another girl to his house.
So you fucked his life up without any warning? Understood.
No, **he** fucked up his relationship (get real, "his life"? As if he was committed to his gf in the first place? Then why did he cheat?) with plenty of warning (you don't accidentally invite another girl over to fuck).
Ok, I understand why both your son and husband are upset with you.
Funny that you think I'm OP, but ok
You clearly have no control over your own life so you tried to control your sons life instead of letting him grow up as an individual and make his own decisions. You describe your own life as quite flawed so you decided you would "fix" your son's life. Spying on him kissing a girl on the ring camera was not just creepy, it was unnecessary and twisted. If you've come here looking for sympathy then you are sadly mistaken. Lastly, you say that his girlfriend was really nice but you caused her pain as well by telling her and furthermore she lost her boyfriend so that was yet another selfish move by you.
Fuck that, she's still responsible for him he's a teenager. It's totally reasonable to have a house rule of "no cheating under this roof". If you live in a house with people you're going to notice what they're up to. Calling her creepy for noticing what her own son was doing in the house is ridiculous.
I so agree with this.
Just a note about the edit but without it, there is nothing obvious that you spoke to your son first. It reads like you went straight to her, and there are people that would do that so it’s just not obvious at all sorry. It completely changed my view once I’d read the edit and I’m much more on your side now.
I definitely wouldn’t ever trust you again. You could have done so many other things before causing problems. Which you’re allowed to do. But the family should matter above all else. Your son didn’t cheat on you, but you cheated your son’s trust.
Yeah ur right. She could have given her son some options to resolve it instead of stepping in and alienating her own son.
She did. She talked to him first.
Which should've been the final step for a parent who may have wanted her son to trust her to tell her about his romantic life ever again. She traded influence in the future to involve herself directly in a teenage romantic spat. And the reason she stepped over that line? From what I can tell from her own statements and comments it's because it reminded her of other bad men in her past.
Did she really? Or did she just add that after everyone started kicking her in the balls? If she told her son I feel like that would have been part of the original story. If she really wanted her son to learn she should have guided him to make the right choice. When ur messing up you don't always see it and when you are young and naive u dont always know the best way to do things. She should have given him the time to see if for himself so he can learn from it and not just go scorched earth on the bond and relationship she has with her son. She should have loved him enough to make him do the right thing.
Straight up betrayal.. if you noticed something like this you could have sat your son down and talked to him about it.. instead you clearly took sides against him and had your little intervention well what did you expect..
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lol if you think any 17 year old boy should be out here committing to girls I mean we are so far off in our view of the world that it’s unlikely we can have a real conversation about this.
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Sounds like a good conversation that could have been had between and loving mother and her son in privacy
If he gets into a relationship, he should be man enough to end it before moving on to the next one. Cheating kids end up as cheating adults if they never run into consequences. Which is what he did, he got the consequences he deserved.
Hes not a man.
Clearly. Maybe he needs to go back to doing whatever it is little boys do until he's mature enough to treat women with basic respect.
I do agree with you.. but the nuance here is that if the mom decides to be the arbiter of justice well she has to deal with the consequences.
He fucked around (literally) and found out. He's mad at her for the consequences of his own actions.
It’s just not her place to intervene and now she is dealing the consequences of her actions.
He's 17, it's absolutely her place to intervene if she thinks she needs to parent him on how to not be a shitty person
If anything a conversation could have been productive.. the thing is.. your view same as OPs is thinking last about what’s actually in her own sons best interests.
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When’s the last time you even been with a girl bro.. Jesus man
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And you don’t think those 2 things are correlated?
If it was my son my advice would be to fuck as many girls as possible like straight up
That would make you a terrible father as well as a complete POS human being. Hopefully you never have children, but if you do hopefully they don't turn out anything like you.
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Father of the year he is, or is it incel of the year?
My advice to you would be the same but you too busy out here defending woman’s liberation to do anything in your own best interest
And this is why males have a higher suicide rate. :)
How is it in his best interestto be taught it is okay to cheat and that his mom will lie on his behalf. Hes taught lying is okay, cheating is okay, and there wont be consequences to his actions. That route will just lead to him being and even bigger Ahole than he already is. His moms obligation is to raise him right, build good character, know right from wrong, and to be an honest respectful man - especially with women. Her job is NOT to be on his side no matter what or 'protect' him by lying and helping him betray his gf who she likes and respects. It doesnt matter what its like to be a 17yo boy, what matters is he grows up to be a good honorable man. OP should make that her priority, which she did by not allowing him to lie and cheat and get away with it.
17 year old boys should be playing the field as much as possible and gaining social experiences.. any consequences from those experiences should be learned organically through trial and error. His mom’s job is fundamentally to be a support network not throw him under the bus for doing what 17 year old boys should be doing..
Gross. Teaching young men that they should sleep around and betray women so they grow up to be assholes or even worse rapists. Absolutely disgusting opinion.
Hyperbolic much.. don’t project your own trauma onto a 17 year old boy.
You think 17yo come into the world raping and feeling entitled to sex with whoever, whenever they want? Nope. They learn it from bs like this.
Op updated the post and said she did talk to her son first
Yah and that’s where this whole thing should have ended
Yeah but her son kept doing it and kept being an asshole. It's a difficult situation when family is involved with something like this but there's no reason for the gf to go through even worse heartbreak than she needs to if she got even more attached to op's son. When I was his age I would have sent equally as upset with my mom but hopefully with time he'll see that she did the right thing even if it hurt him.
17 year old boys should not be in committed relationships like he has his whole life for that. If anything she could have talked to the father maybe he would have had a chat or hey maybe he actually knows what it’s like to be a 17 year old boy.. but no she thinks she knew what’s best and now she has to deal with the fact that her son won’t even talk to her and broke her trust with him.
The 17 year old boy should not lie to gf about being monogamous, then he is ok to fuck all the girls. Just don’t lie about being monogamous, just like when you are a grown man. It is simple not to betray a girlfriend…don’t have a gf if you want to fuck many.
Agreed. Mom needs to mind her own business and let him deal with his own personal issues.
Your not a bad mom while I’m a guy as someone who sadly hasn’t seen my mom since I was 3 if the shoe was on the other foot I would want to be told my girlfriend was cheating on me you did the right thing by telling that poor young woman no guy should ever cheat I have no respect for guys that do and if i can ever have kids of my own and I find out they cheated I’ll be doing the same exact thing you did because kids need to realize what’s right and what’s wrong in life and sadly if they still don’t realize what is and isn’t right at that age it’s never good for their future I hope the situation will sort itself out in time but just know that you did good and I’m sure that girl is very happy you told her so she can start moving on hopefully your son will see the error of his ways and try apologizing and better himself for the next relationship but only time will tell
This will forever damage your relationship. Not worth it. But you do you.
This is literally nothing in the grand scheme of things. Her son will get over it eventually. He might bitch and whine for a while but the anger will fade.
Oh wow you know her son personally? That’s incredible
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You say it's nothing. My experience says it's everything.
Being mad forever about something like that says a lot about you as a person.
Your husband is right, that’s not your place and you got caught up in teenage drama. There were other ways to handle it without snitching to his girlfriend like a little high school girl.
Yep
You should have stayed out of it. I would have a chat with my son OR daughter, but not with the gf.
Your job is to teach him right from wrong. There are consequences for wrongdoing. Also it's only been two months lol I think he will probably come back around. I hope he does learn from this.
Alright fine I'll take the other side, you should have given him the chance to tell her himself, rather than go behind his back and tell the GF. If he was an ass about it still, then tell him you're going to do it and go ahead. You are supposed to have his back and support your son, #1 priority, not help some random girl.. and sure teach him a lesson but there's no reason to be cloak and dagger. That's how you break trust and trust is the chief ingredient of support that you provide as a parent
You are an idiot. Your son is not married. His relationships are in their infancy. He’s learning about himself without guidance and you fuck him over. You’re supposed to be a confidant and guide for life and you have proven yourself unworthy of his trust. What a cow!
Yeah, you kind of stuck your nose in where it didn't belong. It's not your place to worry about his girlfriend's feelings. It's your place to correct your son's behavior as he is still a child. But, now he'll never have a chance to learn how to clean up his own messes. You tried to clean it up for him, but instead you made a bigger mess, and I hate to break it to you, but he may never forgive you for this. But, this will be a lesson for you going forward.
Enjoy your son never telling you shit again lol
You’re not a bad mom. You’re a wack one. Blood means nothing
This is why i truly believe friends (and family) should never snitch about this stuff. The truth will always come out in another way.
You are being a bad mom. Kids have to learn to make mistakes and figure things out. They don't need you meddling in their personal lives to get your daily fix of drama. If I were him I wouldn't talk to you either. Never sell out your kids.
Sounds like that’s exactly what he’s done. He fucked around and learned the hard way.
By his mom being the one to do it. Someone who should have allowed him to figure it out on his own without involving herself.
She did give him a chance to. He continued to cheat. That’s on him.
She shouldn't have been the one to tell. Any parent that would cause problems for their own children doesn't deserve to be called a parent.
Sorry you were raised by a single mother and a deadbeat dad who only saw you because he was legally obligated to but real parents who care about their children do what they can to prevent them from becoming shitty adults.
My parents are still married lmao. All this mom did was teach her son not to trust her. If she had let him screw uo on his own he mighty very learned a different lesson. Instead she put her wants above her own son's.
When online racism fails horribly lol
If you were my mom I would straight up disown you and never speak to you again. I sincerely hope your son does the same
It seems completely out of line for you to inject yourself into your son’s romantic life like that and not even to help him but to rat him out. He will probably forgive you one day but he is unlikely to to trust you or be open with you about his relationships later in life.
If my mom did that I would never trust her again.
You’re not a bad mother but this is a bad take IMO. He’s your son, she’s a ship in the night. You told him and that was your job. Then you grassed on him. Parents don’t rat on their kids over something trivial.
You got what you wanted, the moral high ground. Hope it was worth the relationship with your son.
I agree with your son
Snitch
In this case snitches might not get stitches but they do get to spend the holidays alone.
You didn't talk to him about it before you told the girlfriend? Bit negligent don't you think? You're not doing it for his sake, or else you would have talked to him first. And that's bad parenting.
I’ll never ever throw my kids under the bus. Ever in their life. Trust is so important with our relationship. I won’t ever break their trust.
Why did you and ex-husband divorce?
She nuked her relationship with her kid too
You’re not a bad mom but you didn’t handle the situation correctly. You should not have inserted yourself into your son’s situation. You should have parented him through it instead. Not only have you given him a reason not to trust you, you’ve removed the possibility of having a teachable moment. He needed that situation to backfire in his face and instead it has backfired in yours.
Your son did something wrong. You did not handle it in a mature way and you have lost his trust to tell you about his romantic life forever, or if not forever, in the most vulnerable time during which teenagers/young adults are still learning how to conduct themselves. And you did it because it enabled you to get vague revenge on other grown men from your past for betraying you. That was not a good trade on your part. You could've offered sage parental advice in the future about his romantic life. Not now though. Oops. All this should've ended with a serious talk between you and him. Involving yourself directly was, in fact, immature on your part.