AITAH for going low contact with my parents after moving out of my country?
So my story is a bit messed up but I’ll try to summarize:
My parents met each other in the university where they did their studies and later on went to work, since they’re both college professors. During this time, they fell in love and started a relationship. Problem is that my dad was (and still is) married with a family, and my mom was alone. Everything that I know and I’m going to explain here it is not because they explained it to me (29F) but because my aunt (who is like my mom, later on I’ll explain why) and my grandmother (who basically raised me along with my grandfather) have told me about the situation in the past.
When my mom was pregnant with me, apparently it was a secret until my grandmother found out. My mom lives at her parents and never moved out. One day my grandma was cleaning her room and she saw an X Ray. It was me. I was welcomed into the world and ended up growing up at my grandparents’s and I only have a relationship with my mom’s side of the family.
Throughout the years, I always felt that my mom never really liked me. I know that she loves me, somehow, but she didn’t like me. She never played with me, or took me to a play date, our only time together was when she took me to my piano lessons and afterwards doing grocery shopping. She always made sure that I had clean clothes, food, that my things were ok and that my schooling was ok, but between my aunt and grandparents were the one doing the raising I suppose (bringing me to school, picking me up afterwards, cooking me meals, going to the playground with me, talking to me, etc)
Growing up my dad was there but at the same time wasn’t really there. He’d go to my grandparents to visit, he used to take me to have ice cream, sometimes he took my cousin too (my cousin and I were basically like brothers at the time since how close we were) and he’d always show me pictures of my “uncles and aunts” and of my siblings, and from my grandparents, but that was it. He always made comments about “taking me to his town” during the summer vacations since he’s not from my town.
I did meet my step brother and step sister one or two times around my childhood, but they were not really interested in me. I remember them just being annoyed. I do remember asking: why is he my dad’s son and not my mom’s? But nobody never really explained.
He always talked about taking me there to meet all of those people, but he just never did. I remember getting tired of asking “when?” and just moving on.
According to my aunt, apparently when I was a kid, I used to ask when I never visited my dads home and why did he always came to us (my aunt was living at my grandparents at this point as well, later she moved out) or why do we always had to meet in open spaces (like parks, malls, etc). I also asked her a lot why they didn’t like me, since whenever they took me out (like me, my mom and dad) they just ignored me and just spoke between the two of them. They just talked to me when it was about school (since they really cared about me having good grades) and I was annoyed because during my teenage years, things got really tense between us.
My aunt somewhere around 19 sat me down one day and explained to me that my dad was married (it was the first time I heard about it) and that his wife never wanted to meet me and never accepted me, which is why I never went to his home. Which is why my siblings didn’t like me, and which is why my dad’s side of the family never cared about me, basically.
Listening to that was like picking up the pieces together, which explained why my dad was “there but no there”, since basically he was there for us as long as it was inconvenient to him. When my mom got sick, he used to visit a couple of hours at the hospital, sure, but he never stayed with her. Neither me when I was sick, and I was quite a sick kid up until I was 10 years old, due to an hereditary illness that I got from him. My grandma at some point told me that he was “present” in my life because she pushed him to do it, cause at first it was not like that.
Anyways. When I graduated high school, they got really upset about me not attending the university where they both met, studied and work. They told me that they were not going to pay for my tuition at the university that I ended up attending. Which was ok since my aunt ended up paying for it.
All of these years later, my aunt and me became really close since she was the one helping me with my university studies, paying for my fun, taking me to my events (I was an artist back home) and we built a sort of mom and daughter bond, which really upsets my mom every time I mention it.
As years passed, I just grew apart from my dad, and it got worse since my mom all of these years has pushed me to have a close relationship with him, and in many occasions she has just showed me that she loves him more than me (like not being present at my birthday reunion at home for going to work with him, or the two of them going out and not taking me with them, ignoring me when I needed help, etc.
One day I exploded and I told her that I don’t care and that I just don’t want to force something that I don’t feel. I moved out of my grandparents three years ago when I moved to a new country. Since then, she writes me every day and she misses me and loves me, and she also writes me every day complaining that I don’t text my dad. That he wasn’t a bad father and that he didn’t deserve me ignoring him.
I told her that I was just fed up with her insisting for us to have a close relationship that it’s just not there and that I don’t want her texting me every day about this shit. She never really asks me about my new life, or if I’m happy, or whatever, it’s mostly about being in touch with my dad. I just ignore him.
AITAH for ignoring them?
Thank you for reading tho
Posted Oct 3, 2025, 5:15 PM UTC