My mom [56F] is sleeping with my ex boyfriend [34M] after my dad took his life.
So it’s a complicated story, but I feel completely disregarded in these relationships.
TLDR: my dad took his life. my mom started sleeping with my ex boyfriend. I don’t know how to have a relationship with my only living parent now.
My dad suffered from a crippling autoimmune disease and depression for all of my life, 32F. I believe my mom, 56F kept him alive for so long. My dad was in so much pain and my mom gave up on him and their relationship for the last year of his life. I witnessed their relationship deteriorate, especially the last 6 months before he died. He look his life the day after Father’s Day in 2025. We were all traumatized.
I come from a big family and people my family has adopted into their lives over the years. One of the people that had been “adopted” into our family was my high school sweetheart, 34M, who was my first love and we dated for 3 years. I broke up with him when I went to college and the married my now husband a couple of years later. The ex boyfriend stuck around my family and was mentored by my dad in a tradesman’s job. I dealt with him being around my family through the years and just brushed it off. I was told often that “you broke up with him, not us.” That’s the dynamic.
The ex boyfriend was living on my family’s property and was there the night my dad took his life. He was with my mom when they found him. Yeah, it’s bad.
Once the smoke cleared, my mom needed help with the family business and took my ex on as her business partner. It was a necessity to keep the day to day running. My mom and him started a physical relationship 3 months after my dad passed. I found out about it the week before Christmas. I was disgusted and appalled. I felt completely disrespected and disregarded. What kind of mother does this to their child, especially while in the midst of deep grief and trauma? I have been in serious therapy since my dad passed and to add on this bizarre layer was embarrassing and felt like more betrayal from a parent.
I asked my mother to stop and she didn’t. She just started lying and I confronted her and told her to stop lying to me.
Her and the ex are now living together and I’m stuck in the weird wing on the outside. My family has big get togethers and I am extremely uncomfortable participating in this family as it currently stands. I can’t be around them. It messes with my mind the whole time. I’m constantly watching my every move and theirs. It’s a complete mind game. I can’t get out of it.
There’s a big family gathering coming up at my family’s property and I asked my mom to not have my ex come. I was told that he is a “core” part of the group and that he will be there. I told her that I would not be coming and neither would my children. She is completely at peace with choosing her paramour over me and believes that I am being manipulative.
This sounds like my new reality when it comes to my family. The family of origin that I came from is gone. My dad took his life and he’s gone. My mom is not a mom anymore. She “just wants to be a woman”, in her words. I’m at a loss at what to do or where I belong when it comes to the family whom I desperately love, but the choices that are being made are in complete disregard for me. I understand that we are all on our own journey, but this decision affects my mom and I’s relationship to the core. I don’t know where to go from here.
Idk if this is relevant, but my mom is paying an online “therapist” who is essentially an Ai bot to help her through this loss. 100% it is placating to her every move. I wish she would get real therapy so she can see beyond her own bizarre desires.
I love my mother so much. I want her to be a part of my life. I can’t be a part of her current choices. She’s looking to me for “grace.” To me that just means me bending over backward to love her and maintain her sense of normalcy. My dad was her Jiminy Cricket. Her moral compass is gone. This must be my new normal. Where do I go from here?