When a woman’s marriage to her husband ended, she finally found love with a new man and married him. However, when her daughter revealed her new stepfather seemed to have sights on her, the mother kicked her out instead.
On July 24, 2023, a 55-year-old woman using the Reddit username Throwawayme4158 shared her story, trying to determine if she is the wrong person in the narrative. She revealed that she was married to her child’s stepfather for four years.
The woman and her 63-year-old husband lived together. Growing up, her now 23-year-old daughter was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder (DID) after suffering from trauma while watching her mother’s marriage fall apart.
She and her child have a complicated relationship, and when her daughter told her about being bullied in school, the parent didn’t act. Instead, Throwawayme4158 told her child that she believed all children are innocent and that if she said anything to them, it would amount to an adult harassing a child.
Her daughter never forgave her and referred to a time when the other schoolchildren called her “trash.” At the time, the daughter had stopped taking care of her hygiene while suffering from depression, and among other things, her mother advised her to shower and bought her new clothes.
The bullying stopped when the ringleaders were suspended and expelled, but Throwawayme4158’s daughter still makes her feel bad about it. Once in a while, she notes how her school’s clinic volunteer said if she were her child, she would’ve given her permission to hit back if the administration wasn’t acting.
The Reddit poster shared how she thought allowing her daughter to live with her while finishing college and looking for a job would help heal some of the young woman’s childhood wounds. Throwawayme4158 thought her daughter would be influenced well by the healthy relationship she and her husband modeled, saying:
“However, my daughter now doesn’t get along with my husband.”
The social media poster mentioned how introverted and creative her child was, but she liked immersing herself in escapism. Her daughter got annoyed if her stepfather would sit across her to eat while she was trying to eat alone.
If Throwawayme4158 and her daughter’s relationship had been bad before, the following incident worsened it. How the parent handled the matter didn’t help bridge the gap between mother and daughter.
What Happened to Land the Poster’s Child Out of the House?
Out of the blue, Throwawayme4158’s husband started acting distant from her. To explain his strange behavior, his stepdaughter lamented to her mother that “his eyes lingered for too long.”
The Reddit user revealed that her daughter was livid, shouting and banging doors as she reacted to the alleged sexual harassment. The woman’s husband eventually confessed that he is “attracted” to his stepdaughter and that being around her all day is difficult; he described her as such:
“She was walking temptation.”
The 55-year-old woman’s husband told her his feelings for his stepchild is why he avoids sleeping with his wife. The mother of the 23-year-old became upset to hear the truth and said she didn’t blame her daughter.
Sadly, the situation became so unbearable that she needed time to collect her thoughts and couldn’t do so with her daughter and husband in the same house. Throwawayme4158 gave her daughter money to go and live at an extended-stay hotel.
The parent also advised her adult daughter to use her college’s emergency financial and housing resources. However, the younger woman left upset and told her mother’s previous husband about the incident.
The commenter likened Throwawayme4158 to their mother, who is also selfish and delusional.
The ex-husband responded by painting his ex-wife as a villain on social media. The Reddit user explained that she isn’t trying to abandon her daughter and send her away because she has resources she qualifies for so the younger woman can have shelter.
Throwawayme4158 shared how her ex-husband wasn’t working, and they were in massive debt. The social media user explained that she kicked her child out to give herself time to process things as she didn’t wish to leave her house with her daughter and had to figure out whether to save her marriage.
What Are People’s Reactions to the Woman’s Story?
People who read Throwawayme4158’s story reacted strongly to it, with many calling her bad and an unsupportive mother and the young woman’s stepfather a pervert. A follower noted how they had a hard time believing that the daughter’s DID just came from her seeing her mother fighting with her ex-husband, adding:
“DID stems from repeated trauma before the age of 9-ish.”
The commenter felt the mother was punishing her daughter for her husband’s inappropriate behavior, and he is the one who should be kicked out of the house while she mulled things over. Someone diagnosed with DID in 2021 and had done lots of research on it said it stemmed from “severe and ongoing” abuse.
A Reddit user speculated that the poster hated her daughter while someone else pitied Throwawayme4158 for being unable to see the “innocence and vulnerability” of her child. Another person thought the mother choosing to kick her child out showed how she felt her husband was innocent and her daughter was to blame.