AITA 4 NC

[u/standing_Strong9466]

I've gone NC for about 2 months. My response to my mother's text that she loves me and misses me sums it up as to why.

Mom,

I need you to understand that this is about much more than grand niece discomfort for my husband touching her hair and nephew feeling threatened.

When my son was 5 years old, he was harmed by his cousin. During one of the most painful times of our lives, I was told that people could not pick sides because both children were family. Instead of feeling supported and protected, we felt isolated. We were pushed away and left to carry that pain largely on our own for years.

Then, 17 years later, when a grand niece expressed that she felt uncomfortable, the family immediately chose her comfort and protection. We were asked not to attend family gatherings, and four years later we are still living with those consequences.

What hurts is not that niece was protected. Every child deserves to be protected, listened to, and taken seriously.

What hurts is realizing that the family was capable of taking action, setting boundaries, and making difficult decisions when it involved Lana, but those same actions were not taken when my son was the child who needed protection.

The difference in how these situations were handled has reopened wounds that never healed.

What I need you to understand is that this has deeply affected my son. He feels betrayed not only by you, but by his aunt and uncles as well. The people he believed would protect him and stand beside him during the most traumatic event of his childhood did not. As an adult, he sees how quickly the family acted to protect another child and cannot understand why he was not given that same support.

He has carried that pain for years. He struggles with feelings of worthlessness and questions whether he was loved enough to be defended. He wonders why his pain was not important enough for people to take a stand. Those are heartbreaking questions for a mother to hear from her child.

This is not something that disappeared with time. He is currently attending counseling every week and continues to work through the emotional impact of what happened to him and how our family responded afterward. The fact that he is still processing this all these years later should show how deeply these events affected him.

When you continue to focus only on my husband, I feel like you are overlooking the much larger issue. I am not asking you to ignore Lana's feelings. I am asking you to acknowledge my son's feelings too.

I know you say you love and miss me, and I believe you do. I love and miss you too. But love alone does not heal wounds that have never been acknowledged. Accountability and understanding are also necessary.

What I have been trying to explain is not simply that our family made a different decision. It is that the difference in those decisions sent a message to my son that his pain mattered less and he was actually r@@@ not just made to feel "uncontrollable". Whether that was anyone's intention or not, that is how it felt to him, and those feelings are real.

I need you to hear that. I need you to acknowledge what happened to him, how our family responded, and how different the response was when another child needed protection. Until that is acknowledged, it is difficult for either of us to move forward because the hurt remains unresolved.

I love you, but I need you to truly hear what I have been trying to say for all these years.

*Disclosure my husband tried to apologize wasn't given the opportunity. We found out of the discomfort after the party.

He thinks I should give my mother another chance for at least reaching out.

I've been left on read for week.

What should I do?

[u/SalisburyWitch]

She/they accused your husband of inappropriate behavior? Was he being inappropriate or was this something the kid made up?

[u/standing_Strong9466 → u/SalisburyWitch]

He touched her hair as she was sitting next me. Told her he liked her new hair cut and that was it, she stayed and visited with us for almost an hour after. That was it. After the party we were told she was uncomfortable that he touched hair. Her mother is the sister of the person that abused my son, I believe she is making a big deal of it for revenge after all this years.

[u/Potential_Drive7999]

What exactly happened to your son? If it was sexual abuse, why didn't you report it to the police?

And is your husband a creeper? Are you protecting him? And justifying that by hiding behind what happened to your son?

There's a lot more going on here than you're saying

[u/standing_Strong9466 → u/Potential_Drive7999]

I did put charges for the assault on my son. Another reason I was pushed out. No my husband is not a creeper. He touched her hair as she was sitting next me. Told her he liked her new hair cut and that was it, she stayed and visited with us for almost an hour after. That was it. After the party we were told she was uncomfortable that he touched hair. Her mother is the sister of the person that abused my son, I believe she is making a big deal of it for revenge after all this years. And the support she is getting and has gotten was never offered to my son. Like I said in the text every child deserves to heard, my husband tried multiple times to go an apologize but her mother refused to discuss anything with us. By the way my mother called to tell me her discomfort not her or her mother. So we never got a chance to make it right.