I’ve been dating my boyfriend for over a year now. I live in a foreign country, away from home and parents. For various reasons, I was secretly dating my bf, and didn’t tell my mom about it. This January, my parents were visiting me, and my mom snooped around my phone and found old receipt emails from when I went on a vacation with my bf last summer. This led to a huge fight about him, as she’s incredibly disapproving of him, and has repeatedly given me ultimatums about leaving him, otherwise she won’t talk to me.
My question is: I booked that vacation months beforehand, and a week before our trip, my mom needed to be unexpectedly hospitalized for surgery. I feel incredibly bad about the timing, and my mom has told me this is unforgivable behaviour that I went on a vacation while she was in the hospital (she did have my dad around to help her throughout). I feel bad that I was, in her words, "having fun" and "having sex" with my boyfriend while she was hospitalized. But she keeps using it as a weapon for her overall hatred of me ever since she found out I (a 28 year old gay man) was dating someone she absolutely hates.
I’ve omitted details about my relationship for this subreddit, but I really do need to know if I was a horrible person for that vacation episode.
Info: were you in the country when your mom went to the hospital aka could you have gone to see her there conceivably?
No. I live in a different country for job purposes.
NTA she’s just latched onto the timing because she thinks it gives her a more righteous reason to be mad. But it doesn’t. You being on holiday vs you being at your home while she was in hospital have zero impact on her experience whilst in the hospital.
If you weren’t on vacation in the country your mom was hospitalized in as you don’t live there you are absolutely NTA.
I am actually with my dad in the hospital now and everyone here keeps praising me because I live a 7 hr drive away- no plane tickets or passport required.
You are a grown ass man – why is your mother snooping on your phone such a dismissable action?
>why is your mother snooping on your phone such a dismissable action?
It’s not. And I’ve had multiple arguments with her about that and so many other things. I just wanted to know about the vacation thing because that’s the only thing I genuinely feel bad about, yet feel like it shouldn’t be held over my head since it was planned months before, I live in another country, and my mom’s hospitalization was unexpected.
NTA. Your Mum seems like quite an intrusive parent. You had planned a trip and went on it knowing that your Dad was there to take care of her. If she didn’t have anyone to look after her- it might be different depending on the relationship you have with your Mum. Generally, I think your Mum is really controlling, intrusive and treating you as though you are a child. There also seems to be a lot of guilt tripping involved. I’m wondering what she has been like with your previous boyfriends as this may be less about hating him and more about not liking you having someone else besides her in your life.
You’re NTA for living in a different country to your parents. It wouldn’t matter if you were home or away when your mother was hospitalized, you weren’t able to be there for her either way.
NTA. You’re in another country and it sounds like would have been unable to be there regardless. You’re an adult. Live your life. Unless your bf is abusive, her opinion of him doesn’t really matter. I’d probably go low/no contact until she can speak to you respectfully. You don’t deserve that kind of hate.
NTA but with caveats absent more information.
You live in a **DIFFERENT COUNTRY**. If it were life threatening, or really debilitating, I’m assuming you would have flown to see her. I also assume you **did** call her while she was hospitalized? If you didn’t call (and yes I know it’s easy for time to disappear when on vacation) that’s a shitty thing regardless of how poorly she treats you. (If it were life threatening, yes, IMHO one should cancel a vacation and travel to see their mother. If it was more “mom’s appendix burst” and yo dad is easily able to help her, that’s different.)
I am curious about something tangential to this: does she disapprove of this particular man, or does she disapprove of you being gay, full stop? Either way, without knowledge of other aspects of your relationship (e.g., did this particular man do something incredibly cruel to her to deserve her wrath?) it seems she simply is one of those infantilizing kind of mothers who want to control their adult children’s lives and/or try to keep you dependent on them. And if she is simply flat out anti-gay, well, then I wish you patience, grace and self-care in however you choose to handle that.
NTA don’t forget that you have a life too, and no one should live for their parents
NTA – if you had had to work during her hospitalization, you still couldn’t have been there. It’s not like you’re across town and could swing by with a gift basket during visiting hours.
NTA why do you need to stay at home in another country it wouldn’t help