rSlash - r/Bestof Are My Parents Grooming Me?

Episode Date: June 14, 2024

0:00 Intro 0:09 Parents 10:08 Step siblings Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by RBC Student Banking. Students, get $100 when you open an RBC Advantage Banking account, which includes no monthly fee, unlimited debit transactions in Canada, Avian points on debit purchases, and so, so much more. Unlock more perks for less with RBC Vantage. Conditions apply. Offer ends June 30, 2024. New eligible clients only. Complete criteria by August 30, 2024. Visit rbc.com slash student100. Welcome to r slash best of redditor updates, where OP's parents decide to just go crazy for no reason.

Our next reddit post is from GreedPrincess. In 2021, fresh out of college, I moved to a new state for a job. Since I was facing high rents, the Scots, the family friends of my parents, offered me their guest house for a mere $300 a month. Little did I know, this seemingly sweet deal would lead to a year of turmoil. The Scots, longtime friends and business partners of my parents, had three kids. As soon as I settled in, the Scts became excessively involved in my personal life, particularly my relationship.

The situation took a dark turn as they fabricated scenarios to my parents, accused me of promiscuity, rarely being home, and even planning to secretly move in with my boyfriend. Their disdain for my boyfriend was palpable, treating him with passive aggression, condescension, and even making derogatory comments about him being adopted. The interference escalated with family meetings where they labeled me as a poor influence on their teenage daughter, criticizing my boyfriend whom they'd met three times. And I have to add, my boyfriend and I don't drink or smoke and we both have careers. My boyfriend is a perfectly good man and was always respectful to them despite their poor

treatments. The father of the Scott family also shared his marriage problems and lack of a sex life with me, blurring the boundaries of landlord-tenant and inappropriate relationships. The breaking point came when the fridge in the guesthouse broke, and they insisted that I foot the bill for a $900 replacement. Their influence over my parents was significant, as my parents rarely had my back and sided with the Scots, constantly belittling my boyfriend without reason. By the end of 2022, I decided to move out with some girlfriends of mine, leaving without

saying goodbye to avoid further confrontation. Fast forward to the summer of 2023. My boyfriend and I were living together in a new state, and he proposed. To my surprise, when my boyfriend asked my parents for their blessing, they were supportive and enthusiastic. He even flew out my parents to witness our engagement. My fiance's parents generally offered to finance the wedding. That winter I got a text from my dad who urged me to invite the Scots to my wedding.

I respectfully declined, citing the stress that it would cause me on our special day. This refusal triggered a nuclear war within the family. My parents, who were adamant that the Scots be included, declared that they wouldn't attend the wedding. My dad accused me of starting my happy life by destroying his, and my mother uninvited me to Christmas. In attempts to salvage the situation, I apologized and tried to explain my decision. However, my parents were unreceptive, hurling insults and baseless accusations claiming

my side of the family has been cancelled? What? My mother then flipped the script and threatened to expose details on social media of my disrespect to the family if I didn't show up for Christmas. Then, two weeks later, OP posted an update. I woke up this morning to a bunch of texts from my mother. She demanded that I end my engagement, cancel the wedding, quit my job, and move back into their home. She started saying things like, I know you're unhappy, it's okay, you tried. Now it's time to come home, you have some maturing you need to do.

This irks me so much. My parents literally gave their blessing for my marriage six months ago. Now they want me to change my entire life because they're mad that they didn't get their way? I responded and said that this is my life, and if they don't want to respect my decisions, that's on them. But I'm in utter shock. I'm financially independent from my family, I have a great job, a loving partner.

Where do parents come up with this stuff? Then three months later, OP posted an update. Initially, I found peace in accepting the fact that my parents weren't going to attend my wedding. I looked forward to celebrating with those who would be present and knowing that my parents wouldn't be there to ruin it. However, a text from my younger brother, who's 19, shattered that peace, revealing that our parents threatened to kick him out of the house and abandon him financially if he attends my wedding. This utterly crushed me.

I'm so close with my brothers and I love them dearly. I have three brothers, aged 19, 22, and 27. While my older brother lives independently, my two younger siblings still live with our parents. Despite my parents' decision to not come to the wedding, I told my brothers how badly I want them to attend, assuring them of my support. After they shared their support, I booked their travel, optimistic about their participation. I was naive to believe that our parents would accept this decision.

My parents' outbursts targeted my brothers, leveraging financial threats to dissuade them from attending, claiming that they're betraying the family by supporting me. I offered to financially assist my brothers if they still want to attend the wedding, knowing they would get kicked out, but I realized that's still tough to do. In response to this outburst, my brothers called me and proposed an intervention, aiming to address broader familial issues. I tried my best to explain that this was a bad idea.

In fact, I pleaded with them. Despite my reservations, I supported them by a phone call. I felt that I was bound to by sibling loyalty. That phone call confirmed my fears. There were vile accusations, personal attacks, ranging from insults against my fiance to baseless critiques of our life choices. My father's tirade, marked by verbal abuse, culminated in a cruel dismissal of my feelings. Here's a few notes that I took during this 2 hour intervention.

My fiance isn't an intellectual because he likes to snowboard and doesn't know how to have intellectual conversations. My fiance doesn't have royal or noble blood and therefore cannot have intelligent children? It was rude for my fiance not to buy flowers or wine for my parents when he flew them from another state to see the proposal. My decision to change my job and move to a new state with my fiance is a manipulation tactic. My dad said that calling people names and insults is the right thing to do when you're mad.

My dad said that my decision to change my career path is stupid and I'm cutting him out of his life. He thinks that my fiance's job as a salesman makes him a loser. My parents are mad that I never offered to invite my uncle to the wedding, who I haven't seen in 13 years and who lives in Russia. My dad says that he regrets not punching my fiance in the face when he asks for my blessings and says that it'll haunt him for the rest of his life that he didn't punch him. He says the only reason he gave his blessings was to not hurt my feelings.

He called my fiance's mom a B-word. I started hysterically crying at this point. I felt like a little girl again. He called me a liar when I explained all the horrible things his friend did to me and why I didn't want to invite them to the wedding. He even called me a liar when I explained that his friend, who's 70 by the way, would try to talk about his sex life with me. Crying, I explained to my dad, I just wish you cared about my feelings too because I am also really hurt and I just want you to understand my perspective. He said, why the f*** should I care about your feelings?

You don't respect me, my friends or my values. F*** your feelings you stupid b***h. I ended the call right there. After this call, my brother said that they would still be attending my wedding because this has become an issue of standing up to my father's unacceptable behavior. Despite my brother's attempts to defend me, we were outmatched by our father's narcissism. Today marks day one of going no contact. Then one month later OP posted an update and she spends a few paragraphs explaining that

she decided to cut her parents out of her life, her brothers attended her wedding and her wedding was great. The day after the ceremony, over breakfast with my husband and older brother, I learned that my parents had been incessantly trying to reach out to my brother. My brother and husband shielded this information from me so that I didn't get upset this week. However, my curiosity got the better of me and I insisted on asking my brother to see what my parents said to him. What I read shook me to the

core. My brother texted my mom, she will never forgive you for this and our entire family will never be the same. My mother's response, forgive us? She betrayed the family? She's gone completely insane! This sinister family has completely changed her values, and they've been grooming her for three years. She's making a huge mistake by marrying. Glad you guys are so close again. The guilt that I'd been carrying evaporated in an instant. I realized that me being happy with my husband would never be enough for them. I refused to be held hostage by their misery any longer. You can't change someone who just wants to be miserable for the rest of their lives. Here's where things become laughable.

I blocked the Scott's wife on Instagram so that she wouldn't see my wedding photos. Mr Scott, in response, sent a giant text accusing me of being abusive to his wife and kids, despite the fact that I haven't seen or spoken to them in over a year. He then said that he will no longer support me, and if I get a divorce, he won't be there for me. I promptly blocked him, refusing to entertain such a stupid message. Alright, that post was unexpectedly bonkers. I'm gonna be honest, I don't fully understand why the parents

completely flew off the handle over something so minor. So going through the comments, I see a surprising number of people say that their theory is that the Scots were planning on grooming OP to become Mr. Scott's mistress. Which, um, I don't know if that's the case or not. My personal theory as I was reading this is that the Scotts wanted OP to marry one of their sons, not Mr. Scott's. But this is just total speculation. I don't know, what do you guys think? Our next Reddit post comes from rslashrelationships. My dad married my stepmother three months ago and I feel like it made my life significantly harder and less

pleasant. They moved in with us and for the indefinite future, the situation won't change. We have a three bedroom house and before they moved in, my dad and I had our own rooms, both with bathrooms, and there was a smaller room which was a study from my dad. After they moved in, my stepsister Jenny, who's 16, got my room. And I had to share the smaller room with my two stepbrothers, Tom and Mike, who are 11 and 10. All my books, my telescope, and my things are packed up and are now in the basement since there's no space anymore. This made me really angry, but my dad told me that I have to be a team player and this is what him

and his wife agreed on. Jenny treats me like garbage. She sometimes acts as if I'm not there at all and sometimes is super aggressive and hostile towards me. The other day I asked Tom to stop going through my things and she became so angry and said, you have no right to order my brother around. She told me to get it in my thick skull that I'm not their big brother to tell them what to do, even though all I asked was for them to stop going through my things. She said that it's best if I don't talk to them at all since that way they'll get less influence

from a weirdo like me. What I don't get is that if she's so concerned that I might leave a bad influence on Tom and Mike, then why doesn't she change rooms with me? Tom and Mike don't respect any boundaries. They're always going through my stuff. I have a watch which was a gift from my mother. She died of cancer. And they took it from my drawer and lost it. I found it weeks later in the basement with its glass broken. Before they moved in, I used to get a $100 allowance every month. Now Jenny gets $75, I get $35, and Tom and Mike each get $30. I had an Xbox, but these kids broke it. I used to spend a lot of time with my dad.

He used to come see me play basketball almost every week. He hasn't done it even once in the past 3 months since he's always working overtime. We eat out once a week, and none of them in these 3 months have been to any of my favorite places. But Jenny, Tom and Mike have each chosen their favorite places more than once. I complained about all of this to my father last week and he told me that family is all about sacrifices and I have to make my sacrifices. But haven't I made enough sacrifices already? I feel like I'm

the only one making sacrifices. I looked forward to them moving in here, but now I feel like an outsider at home. It's not my home anymore. I don't want to live here anymore, but I'm only 15 and I can't move out. I have nobody else who can take me in. I can't stay here for three more years. I'll go crazy. I often fantasize about running away at night, but I know that's also as horrible, if not even more. Then, one month later, OP posted an update. Okay, a lot's happened. I decided to just ask my dad and stepmother for some time to talk to them, and I just showed them my post on Reddit. They took a good half an hour to read everything. There were times that it looked like they were going to start crying.

Eventually they told me that they need more time and will talk about it in a couple of days. Two nights later, my dad asked me to come to the room and to make it short, they got it. They both hugged me and at some point my stepmother started crying. They apologized to me for their negligence and told me that they messed this up. They had put all their attention and focus on helping my step siblings adjust given their new living arrangements and everything and neglected how difficult it must have been for me. They promised me that things will change. As for the room arrangement, they realized that it's not reasonable.

So they offered me the basement, as a lot of you suggested. We went to the store and bought a lot of supplies and made it a family exercise for everyone to contribute refurbishing the basement and make it like a bedroom. So now I'll have my own room. It won't have a bathroom like before, but I can share a bathroom with the boys. That's not a problem. The money allowance changed as well. Now Jenny gets $60, I get $50, and the boys get $30 each. So basically $15 shifts from Jenny to me, which I think is much more fair. It's not as good as the $100 I used to have, but this is something I can understand and accept. Now to Jenny.

My stepmother told me that Jenny's problem isn't really with me. It's that her mother remarried and Jenny doesn't like that because Jenny was hopeful that her mom would return to her dad. Now she's trying to make this work and I'm just caught in the crossfire. Apparently she's been a little B-word to my dad as well. My stepmom promised me that she would handle Jenny and make sure that she won't be a problem. As for the boys, this is the most difficult one since they're 10 and 11.

My parents gave me a small lock so that I can lock my bag for now, and when the basement is ready, I can lock its door and only me and the parents will have the key. So at least my stuff will be safe. They also made some little changes to make things easier. They told me that I can come to them for any problems and my dad promised me some father-son time every couple of weeks as well. Ginny came to me a few nights later and asked if I would come with her for a walk in the neighborhood as she wanted to talk to me.

She apologized to me for everything and told me that she didn't and still doesn't like that her mom married my dad and she was forwarding her anger and frustration towards me, which wasn't right. She said that I'm probably going through similar things as she is and there's really no reason for us to make each other's lives even more difficult than it already is. So I accepted her apology and we shook hands on being on the same team from now on. And honestly, she's been very different ever since. She's helping me a lot in preparing the basement, and she makes Tom and Mike help as well.

The other day when I asked Tom to turn down the TV volume and he refused, she told him, listen to your big brother. I hope she remains this way. It's nice to have a story with a happy ending every once in a while. That was our slash best of redditor updates, and if you liked this content, be sure to follow my podcast, because I put out new reddit podcast episodes every single day.