**I am NOT OOP, OOP is** u/hellshealth **Originally posted to r/TwoHotTakes** **My (22m) gf (23f) is secretly visiting my abusive parents with...
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The original was posted on /r/bestofredditorupdates by /u/Choice_Evidence1983 on 2025-03-14 04:02:08+00:00.

I am NOT OOP, OOP is u/hellshealth

Originally posted to r/TwoHotTakes

My (22m) gf (23f) is secretly visiting my abusive parents with our son (3m) and doesn’t understand why this upset me. We had a huge fight and I don’t know what to do now?

Thanks to u/soayherder for suggesting this BoRU

Trigger Warnings: past childhood trauma, emotional manipulation, mentions of child abuse, betrayal, possible parental alienation

Original Post: March 3, 2025

I didn’t have an easy time growing up, my childhood was so fucked up that I sort of just put it all in a mental box and left it at that. Needless to say I left my parents as soon as I could and then went no contact and haven’t seen them since.

Theres several reasons I went no contact and she seemed understanding enough when I told her that I didnt even want to tell my parents about their grandson. I don’t want my son around these people, I dont want my girlfriend around these people and above all I would never leave any child alone around these people. My girlfriend doesnt know about what exactly my father did to me and my sister but I also feel like she doesnt have to know in order to respect my wishes?

Yesterday my sister texted me a picture of our parents dog in the background was my sons shoes. Our mother uploaded it on FB, where i have them blocked, but my sister recognized the shoes though mainly was concerned about them even having a kid over. My gf and I both work, she only part time, but we always have someone to watch our child, either my sister or my gfs family, so its not like she had to bring him there to have someone watch him. This was a deliberate decision that she should have made with me.

I talked to my son about it and turns out hes been there several times unsupervised, alone with my father. Apparently nothing happened, but I was understandably angry and confronted my gf as soon as she was back home, which of course lead to a huge fight. She left crying and went to her parents house and later her mother came to pick up my son which I refused which lead to a fight with her mom too.

My gf texted me, asking to talk later today and I know I cant keep my son from her (I also dont want to) but I dont want to go into our conversation unprepared so any advice is welcome. I also feel betrayed and still very angry and I’m honestly ready to break up over this but my son is very upset and anxious because he heard our fight and I’m just at a complete loss and don’t know how to handle this.

Relevant Comments

Commenter 1: On the one hand, if she doesn’t know the whole story, I can appreciate why she would want to try to foster a relationship.

But on the other….she betrayed you. And further, why did she need a secret babysitter? It kind of seems like maybe there’s more to this if she was leaving him with them.

OOP: Even without the whole sory I always felt like she knew enough about my childhood. I can understand it too, her mother also told me not to hold grudges and my father apparently has issues with his liver (wonder where thats coming from) so I should just “take the first step and forgive them” but this is my decision and she kept it a secret for months and essentially told my son to lie to me.

I was so angry I didn’t even think about any other reason why she would leave him there but youre right. I mean I kind of just assumed that she would visit them to rebuild that relationship because we have babysitters.

OOP explains if he has documents or reports of the abuse from his parents and other significant details

OOP: Yeah my sister and I have no proof of what happened and she wanted to get financial aid bc her ptsd makes it harder for her to work but her lawyer said itd be hard to get anyone to believe her/us. She gave up on that eventually.

A couple people have suggested lawyers and custody agreements but I’m worried that my son would get to live with my gf and her family if we did break up because I have nobody in my corner except for my sister while shes his mom and has a whole family to support her.

Admitting to/confronting what happened with my parents in the past is really hard for me which is why i never actually told her in detail and I think that was my mistake. I never considered that shed wish for him to get to meet them. Up until my sister texted me the photo i had kind of just ignored they existed.

Commenter 2: O she taught your son to not trust you. That would be a reason to drag her ass to court for a custody agreement where she also has to sign that she will never go to your parents behind your back with him.

Imagine a toddler who get told by his mom not to tell daddy… that little kid was in an abusers home unsupervised… many many times. Imagine grandpa would have done something to him but the kid had learned to keep secrets… That’s horrible and manipulative. Imagine an accident happened to that child… you would have been non the wiser. That betrayal is unforgivable, she drove a wedge between you and your kid. Nah, I would be done.

OOP: I panicked when he said it was something he wasnt supposed to say. She apparently told him it was a surprise and thats why he had to say he was at her parents.

I wouldnt have been this upset had she cheated on me but she involved him, made him keep a secret and put him at risk and the more i’ve been thinking about this the more i feel like I just cant trust her anymore. Especially if something did happen and he just doesnt realize and I haven’t asked the right questions or he doesnt have the vocabulary

 

Update: March 7, 2025 (four days later)

First of all thank you for all the comments and input. I didn’t feel like I could even think when I made my initial post so it was good getting different perpectives.

This will be a long post but ill put a tl;dr at the bottom.

I did write that my gf and I would talk that same day I posted but we didn’t because I needed to sort myself out and I think she did too. She’s been avoiding me ever since and requested we talk at her parents place but I didnt want that so we didn’t get to talk until yesterday while my son was at my sisters.

Apparently in September last year my mother reached out to my gf on FB asking how me and my son were doing. My mother is a very intelligent woman but highly manipulative. She convinced my gf to visit them because my father is ill. My gf said she didn’t tell me because she knew id say no and she wanted to see what kind of people my parents were. She brought our son but didn’t leave him alone at first, but their visits got fairly regular and she became comfortable with leaving him with my parents. He seemed fine, even seemed to like it there, so she didn’t feel like he was in danger. The first time she left my son fully alone was when she went Christmas shopping.

I think from what I had told her about my childhood home, she expected a house of horrors but according to her the place was clean and fixed up, the dog was healthy and my parents were nice.

The thing is that she knew “something happened” to my sister. I never told her what happened to me which I now see I probably should have done. She doesnt see predators everywhere like I do and when my son didn’t report anything negative she saw no issue taking him and leaving him there. Its pretty clear that she doesnt know anything about abuse and what it can look like. I dont understand how she could think shed be able to spot the signs with this little knowledge. My father has been in contact with children most of my life and while I dont know if hes done anything to them, my sister always said he knew how to make children feel at ease. Both my parents are very methodical and calculating so I dont blame her for believing them but I blame her for not discussing this with me. She went to visit them after talking to my mother for a few days, meanwhile ive lived there for 17 years and somehow she thought she knew better than me.

Even when I told her some details about my childhood she still tried to push supervised visits, saying my father was ill and my son had a right to meet his grandparents which I don’t agree with at all. The thought of children being around these people makes me sick but she seems reluctant to agree to officially limit their visitation rights. I’d need her agreement however, unless I want a court case.

I also tried to explain why this felt like a betrayal, because this is not just about putting my son in danger, its also about her going behind my back for months. What else would she be capable of? Then she told my son to keep the visits a secret which is exactly what abusers say too.

She did apologize, saying she made an honest mistake and feels like I’m blowing this out of proportion and that her parents think so too. Besides, our son is fine and I shouldnt have raised my voice at her mother and should be more grateful for what her parents have done for me and us over the years (which I am, I owe them, sure, but that doesn’t mean they can just overrule my parenting decisions or get so involved). I feel like neither her nor …

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  • @[email protected]MEnglish
    1•2 days ago

    She did apologize, saying she made an honest mistake and feels like I’m blowing this out of proportion and that her parents think so too. Besides, our son is fine and I shouldnt have raised my voice at her mother and should be more grateful for what her parents have done for me and us over the years (which I am, I owe them, sure, but that doesn’t mean they can just overrule my parenting decisions or get so involved). I feel like neither her nor her parents trust me or take me seriously and its so frustrating when the mother of your son is pretty much actively working against you. I don’t think she can even grasped how terrified I was when I talked to my son about their visits. Again, I know its my fault for not telling her everything but I never thought she would do something like that. My past never really affected me much anyway, I never felt like there was a reason for her to know all the details.

    Honestly, I don’t know if anything is resolved. I know why she made the choices she made but I don’t feel like she understands why I was and still am upset. She left after bringing up her mother because i got angry and I know I shouldnt have but I reveal something so big and just still dont get taken seriously.

    I want us to work and she agreed that it’d take a lot of work to get back to before all of this which im not sure is even possible. I apparently deeply upset her and scared our son (true, I never wanted us to fight in front of him like that either) and I angered her family. I think for me emotionally all feelings for her vanished the moment I found out so thats kind of where I’m at now.

    I wish we could make it work for his sake but I dont want him to grow up with dysfunctional parents or with his parents fighting every day so if this doesnt work out ill need to get a lawyer. I’m willing to put in the work needed for us to stay together but ive been doing a lot of thinking. We were so young when we started dating and had our son and I’m not sure i ever thought about us staying together forever. I only stayed because I was living with them and then I stayed because I didn’t want to be a shitty teen dad, abandoning my son and the girl I loved (because I really did love her I think, also I am partially responsible for her being pregnant in the first place) before he was even born.

    As for my son I have talked a lot to him these past few days. I had taught him about touch and what’s okay and what isn’t so I just hope its true that nothing happened. He has also, apparently, not seen anything inappropriate. Our fight got to him though and he knows I was sad and knows his mom is too and I hope him and I talked it out enough and that my gf gets to talk about this with him too. We might just sit him down or something, I’ll need to talk to her about that.

    TL;DR

    my gf went over to my parents behind my back since September after my mother reached out to her, arguing my father was ill. She gradually became more comfortable with leaving my son alone with them. As for why she didnt tell me, she said because she knew id say no but she wanted to see what my parents were like. I guess she figured they werent that bad after all, but she had backed herself into a corner that first time her and my son visited them in secret.

    It seems like she thought all was well and she had good intentions, repairing that relationship at least somewhat. She thinks my son has the right to get to know his grandparents and shes reluctant to agree to take away their visitation rights.

    I dont think her and i are or will ever be on the same page about this, I dont feel like she understands what could have happened, what these forms of abuse look like or how they work. Her parents, this far, are also agreeing with her (but I havent talked to them yet)

    She did apologize, but said im overreacting and we agreed to work on all of this but I’m not sure that will be of any use.

    At least our son seems fine.

    Edit:

    I feel the need to clarify a few things, also I see a bunch of people fighting in the comments and I didn’t word things as clearly as I should have in the post.

    I went no contact with my parents when I moved out for good. When my gf was pregnant we talked about my parents and I told her I did not want to tell them they were going to be grandparents and I did not want them to ever see our child. She agreed and that was it.

    Her and I have talked about my childhood prior to my first post, she knows enough about my living conditions to know it was unsafe for any child, she knows my father is a violent alcoholic and she knows about a lot of the crazy shit my mother pulled over the years. She knows my sister has a ptsd diagnosis and she knows my father touched her. That is everything she knew and I honestly think that should have been enough. Her parents also know about most of this.

    Yes, I raised my voice at her and her mom when I found out she had been taking him there and I should definitely not have done that. It’s been really really hard to stay calm when talking about my parents especially with her refusing to listen to me. Our conversation on Thursday was very emotional as well but I ultimately just shut down after I told her that my father has also abused me and yet she still said “I dont see why we cant do supervised visits” and I don’t even have an argument because logically he cant do anything with someone watching but it still feels like I’d be trafficking my son even if he doesnt touch him at all and I cant even explain why I feel that way. People in the comments say its just an emotional response which is true and maybe its illogical but I truly don’t see how getting to know his grandparents would be beneficial to him anyway.

    The reason I hadn’t told her the details before is because I was fine being intimate, I managed at work, it’s not like i want to kill myself every day because my parents were shitty or something. It didn’t need to be brought up and then having to talk about it is just painful and theres a lot shame and just things my parents I guess brainwashed me to feel. It felt even more impossible after how dismissive she was.

    Things have calmed down between us now, maybe its sinking in for her now even though she still argues that nothing happened and ultimately everything was fine but it feels like thats just her inability to accept shes made a mistake (repeatedly). She said she really thought they were okay because they seemed normal (clean house and all, their dog is not a ball of matted hair like our old one, everything being the opposite of how I described it). I don’t think shed bring him there behind my back again but I obviously can’t say for certain.

    We have not talked about this any more, maybe we need that right now so our son doesnt realize how bad it is between us currently though I’m worried he knows anyway. I think we will separate though, I don’t see us as future partners anymore. Her teaching him to lie to me (and her parents apparently told her that isn’t a big deal) really scares me. I’m scared they will paint me as abusive or something because I really don’t have much going for me when it comes to custody. Shes the one with a functional support system, with people helping her look after our child and her parents have the money for a good lawyer and can risk a lenghty legal battle. All of this however are things I need to talk to a lawyer about as soon as I find one.

    I’m not feeling anything for her anymore, not even anger. I know we can’t stay together, I don’t want us to end up like my parents, I dont want my son exposed to that so I’m going to have to discuss separating with a lawyer and then decide from there. I think the best I can hope for is that well separate without much fighting and that we can coparent effectively which is also why I don’t want to stir up any more arguments.

    I’ll definitely take legal steps against my parents seeing him though as well as taking him to a doctor.

    Relevant Comments

    Commenter 1: Honestly, I think you should go ahead and talk to a lawyer. At minimum, they can advise you on whether there are any protections you can put in place when it comes to your family so your girlfriend can’t just ignore your “no” without consequences. But given that she still doesn’t seem to think she did anything seriously wrong, you’re probably going to want to know what all your options are if you have to enforce them.

    I’m torn on whether couples therapy would be a good idea to get through to her that she can’t just decide she knows better than you on this, including what is and isn’t a big deal, or if you should just work with someone on your own on reinforcing boundaries and where and how to draw the line. Maybe start with the latter and go from there.

    OOP: I think couples therapy would be good so we’d have someone there to mediate and make sure we don’t end up fighting. I’m just not sure how to afford that and a lawyer. Her parents are supporting us financially and we are on financial aid because we don’t make enough between the two of us. We might manage therapy but I doubt she would pitch in for a lawyer especially if its about us separating and making custody agreements.

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