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AITAH For not planning anything for fathers day after my husband ruined my first mothers day (old.reddit.com)

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The original was posted on /r/bestofredditorupdates by /u/Choice_Evidence1983 on 2025-07-05 04:02:07+00:00.

I am NOT OOP, OOP is u/CounterNecessary2597

Originally posted to r/AITAH

AITAH For not planning anything for fathers day after my husband ruined my first mothers day

Original Post: June 16, 2025

I'm 98.7% sure that I am not the AH here, but I'm wrong I'm willing to admit it and learn from my mistakes.

Our little boy will be one late this summer, so this was the first mothers day and fathers day for both me and my husband. My husband asked what I wanted for mothers day. I didn't want/need anything big or expensive. What I asked for is:

For husband to get up with the little guy and get him fed while I pumped and chilled
Breakfast in bed - just toast, scrambled eggs and coffee
For us to take the little guy to the zoo for the first time. This was the main thing I was looking forward to.
Go to my fav taco place for dinner

Between morning and afternoon naps we have about 4 hours of awake time. The zoo is abt 30 min away so I had figured if we left as soon as he got up from his nap and ate, we'd have a couple hours at the zoo and worst case he could sleep in the car on the way home.

We took my mom and my MIL out to brunch the prior weekend to celebrate them- his mom on Saturday and my mom on Sunday. I also got them each a thoughful little present and flowers to celebrate their first mothers day as grandparents. I arranged everything and told my mom and MIL that we'd be celebrating on the actual day with just our little family and sent them a group chat (which included husband, my dad and FIL) just to make sure everyone is on the same page. My MIL is very pushy and overbearing so I didn't want there to be any surprises or confusion.

The Saturday before Mother's Day, FIL sent my husband a text with a picture of all the mulch he just had delivered and said something like "gonna be a busy weekend!" or something like that. Apparently he had 300 bags of mulch (they have a big yard with lots of flower beds). That night my MIL called my husband and asked him to come over first thing in the morning to help his dad move the bags of mulch to where they were going to be used. She said since we weren't going to the zoo until after little guy's nap, that husband could go over and help for a couple hours and then come pick us up to go to the zoo. I was obviously not happy but she guilted him and said FIL was going to end up hurting himself if he moved all that by himself and that its not a big deal and should only take an hour or two. I told him his mom was doing this to try and get us to skip our plans and spend the day with them but he kept saying it's not a big deal, saying his mom promised it would only take a couple hours, etc etc.

I think most people know what happened - husband went over first thing, which means no breakfast in bed and I had to get up to feed the little guy. I was kinda pissed, but whatever. Spent time with the little guy then when he went down for his morning nap I texted my husband to let him know he should start wrapping things up. Then when little guy woke up 2hrs later I called husband to tell him I'd be ready to go as soon as I finished feeding the little guy. He told me it was taking longer than he expected but that he'd hurry. Like an hour and a half later husband called and said they weren't done but he was getting ready to come home. It's 15-20 minute drive from MIL/FILs house. At that point we'd missed the window to make it to zoo so I told him to just stay there and finish and not worry about Mothers Day since he hadn't done a single thing I asked for. I don't think there wasy any doubt in his mind how pissed I was. A little later his mom called and said since we decided not to go to the zoo, that me and little guy should go hang out with her while "the boys" finished with the mulch. I admit that I was pretty pissy and told her I had no interest in spending time with the people who decided to ruin my first mothers day. I ended up staying home and ordering a pizza and binging Netflix.

When husband got home he was all apologetic and asked how he could make it up. I was still pissed and told him he could make it up by not ruining my first mothers day. I also told him he should plan on spending Fathers Day with his mom and dad bc me and the little guy were going to go celebrate Fathers Day with my mom and dad.

Since Mothers Day MIL has been texting and calling but I've been keeping conversations short and just giving very bland generic responses.

My husband has been apologizing and asking what he can do but honestly I don't want to bother. I know it's just a day and we can celebrate any time, like we did with my mom & MIL. But it was my first ever Mothers day. And it's not like I asked for anything expensive or difficult. The only difficult thing is he's incapable of setting boundries with his mom. And she's incapable of considering anyones feelings but her own.

This past Saturday he asked if I was still going to my parents then said he'd like to go with us. I told him he could do whatever he wanted but since I hadn't done anything for his dad he might want to go see him or something. We did both end up going to my parents and spending the day with them. It was actually a nice day. My dad insisted on grilling because of course he did but the weather ended up being nice and we spent a lot of time hanging out on their deck playing with the little guy.

I'm not sure what if anything my husband did for his dad. I know he was getting a lot of texts during the day, I assume from his mom. She did send me a snippy text saying it was hurful to spend the day with my family at the expense of husbands but I told her she got to spend Mothers day with her baby boy so it's only fair that I spend Fathers day with my family.

I know my husband was hurt that we didn't acknowledge him for Fathers Day but I told him while we were driving to my parents house that I'm just matching his energy. I admit that I haven't done anything to de-escalate the drama but I'm still just so hurt he continues to prioritize his mom's feeling over our little family. This isn't the first time his mom has done crap like this and I'm just so tired of it. She always oversteps and insists on doing what SHE wants. I'm doing better at keeping her at arms length and holding my own boundries but my husband is absolutely incapable of it.

EDITED to fix a typo

AITAH has no consensus bot, OOP was NTA

Relevant Comments

Commenter 1: NTA

Look at the shiny spine on you!!!! Your husband should take notes!! You're a badass and I wish I had your spunk. Ask him why he'd rather be a good son than a god father? When is his child going to matter more than his mommy's fee fee? Im proud you're not letting her get away with her shit. What about Christmas? Birthdays?

OOP: So far it's been a lot of the same. Technically we've tried to alternate holidays or celebrate with one of our familys on a different day but his mom calls & texts nonstop if we spend a holiday with my family. I already told him this Christmas we are spending Christmas Day at home, just the three of us. That should be interesting to see what tricks MIL pulls out.

Commenter 2: NTA

Although, you knew your husband wasn’t go to make it by the time your son woke up. Why didn’t you just take your son and enjoy the zoo?

OOP: I really should have. I think I was trying to convince myself he'd come though for us. Lesson learned.

Does OOP's own mother do the same thing like her MIL?

OOP: lol actually my mom & I get along really well. She can be overbearing and pushy too with the difference being when I tell her to back off she does. But she said the same thing a lot of people her are saying. That I'm justified in my feelings but if we end up going down this path we won't be married for long. She thought I should accept his apology and let it go and give him the chance to do better.

Is OOP's husband an only child or does he has any siblings?

OOP: We're both only children. But his mom is waaaaaayyyyyyy more invested in his life than either of my parents. My mom can be a pain, but when I ask her to stay in her lane she usually does.

Commenter 3: Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think your anger and hurt come from the fact that your husband would do it again.

He seemed more sorry that you were upset - kind of like he was looking to you to tell him how to undo this - instead of being sorry that he hurt you.

You have a MIL problem, but you have a much bigger husband problem!!

This wasn’t an emergency so it didn’t need to be done that day. You both need to get into counseling - individual for him, as well as couples counseling.

If he wants to fix this, counseling is a must.

OOP: You're 100% right. It's because this kind of thing has happened lots of times. But this time it ruined something that I thought was really important to me

Downvoted Commenter: Your husband isn’t your child. He’s not supposed to do anything special for you for Mother’s Day. He can acknowledge you and that’s enough. He should be doing something special for his mom. Your children will celebrate you when they are older. When your kids start celebrating you then you’ll know what ...

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Downvoted Commenter: Your husband isn’t your child. He’s not supposed to do anything special for you for Mother’s Day. He can acknowledge you and that’s enough. He should be doing something special for his mom. Your children will celebrate you when they are older. When your kids start celebrating you then you’ll know what Mother’s Day is all about. Side note: yeah it would’ve been nice if he celebrated you the way you want it to be. But you’re also a grown woman, you should’ve just left to the zoo with your son and enjoyed yourself.

OOP: So expanding on that theory, I was under no obligation to celebrate him or do anything for him on Father's Day and I did the right thing by celebrating my dad?

Update: June 23, 2025 (six days later)

I posted here last week, you can find it in my profile if you want the backstory. I wanted to thank everyone. I've had a lot of people asking for an update, so here we go.

This weekend the husband and I sat down and talked about everything. I expressed to him how incrediably upset and disappointed I was at how both Mother's Day and Father's Day went down. I really wanted to recognize and celebrate my husband for FD everybit as much as I hoped he would recognize and celebrate me for MD. He said he knew he shouldn't have gone to his parents on MD but didn't know what to do since his mom was pressuring him and saying if his dad got hurt it would be husbands fault. He admitted that he knew he messed up and has been terrified that I was going to ask for a divorce.

Since he cut to the chase, I told him that if this is how our life is going to be, I don't want to stay married to him. I explained to him that I realized that while yes, I was upset about what happened on Mother's Day, that isn't what is making me feel this way. That was just the straw the broke the camels back. This kind of behavior from his mom has been happening since we before got engaged and has just escalated. This has been happening for YEARS. As someone here suggested, I had listed all the times/events (that I could remember) that she had overstepped or just completely ruined. For our freaking honeymoon, she called him TWICE A DAY. Every monrning to find out our plans for the day and then every evening to hear how the day went. Plus the constant texting, asking for pictures, telling him how much she missed him. I don't know how I thought this was acceptable. She tried to make our wedding about herself, tried to make my pregnancy about herself, tried to take over when we brought our son home, just constantly inserting herself and overstepping.

I told him that I don't really want to get divorced right now, but it's going to happen anyway, I'd rather get divorced now while we can still do it amicably. Because if nothing changes I'm going to end up so angry and resentful that it would make divorce very contentious and I don't want that for our son. At this point we were both crying, upset and emotional. So I told him that I'll give him some time to decide what he's going to do but if I don't see clear effort being made to start prioritize me and our son that I'd move forward with the divorce. And the change has to continue. Everytime we've fought about this in the past, he's promised he'll change and sometimes he has, but then his mom pulls him back into her orbit.

If we are to stay married - these are some of the things I'm insisting on in no particular order:

We each own the relationship with our own parents. That means I'm not planning anything for his parents anymore. No cards, no presents, no burnches or parties, no pictures, nothing. If his parents reach out to me I'm going to redirect them to him.

I'm not entertaining or visiting with his parents when he's not around. I'm not taking our son over to theirs by myself. And if they "drop by" I'm not inviting them in unless my husband is there.

I'm not changing my plans at the last minute just because they decided to drop by without coordinating with us in advance or because they want us to do something with them.

Neither of us makes plans with our parents or accepts invitations until we discuss with our partner. And if we don't both agree the we don't do it. And we don't throw each other under the bus, we just say something like "we checked our schedule and we're not available".

Holiday's like Christmas, Halloween, Easter, etc are at our house. We can discuss inviting our parents but we're not going to someone else house to celebrate something involving our son when we can do it at home. This includes his 1st bday which MIL is trying to take over and plan.

Other holidays we're alternate between our parents. And we will focus on being present. That means no more texting/talking to his mom non-stop when we're with my parents.

No more oversharing with MIL. She doesn't need to know about our finances or health/medical issues or vacation plans or anything unless we both agree its something we want to share.

His visits to his parents can't be at the expense of spending quality time with me and our son. I don't mind him visiting his parents, but he's over there a couple times a week. We are his immediate family now, we should get priority.

We're not doing things just because she said we should. And we're not changing our plans just because she doesn't like them. She really doesn't understand that "Wrong" and "Different" are not the same thing. In her mind, if we're not doing what she wants, HOW she wants, then we are in the wrong.

He needs to go to therapy with someone specializing in emeshment. And we need to start going to couples therapy. I didn't even realize I have so much pent up resentment that I can't look at my husband the same anymore. I'm just angry at him all the time and I hate being this way.

When it comes to our son, our word (husband and me) is law. If she disregards or minimizes our decisions for our son, then she looses access until she learns to behave.

When me or my husband say "No" to either set of parents, the other person will support them and back them up. That means my husband has to stop trying to get me to agree with his mom all the time.

I can tell he's freaked out and really stressed about the idea of putting hard boundries in place or distancing from his parents. And I do feel for him. He said he feels like he's caught between a rock and a hard place and that me and his mom are both putting a ton of pressure on him and both have conflicting expectations. And that's fine. He just needs to understand that I'm not tolerating this anymore. I know this will cause an absolute shit storm with his parents but I feel like if we don't do it now, it'll just be harder down the road.

What does everyone think? Am I being unreasonable? Are there other boundries we should put in place?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

Relevant Comments

Commenter 1: You need a timeline, can’t say do all this and then in a year say hey you didn’t do check box 3 and 4, I am out. By September we’ll have had a counseling session together and he had 2 on his own and we had a family trip (just 3 of you) to the seaside or something. Put dates down, so by new years if things haven’t improved you can call a lawyer.

OOP: That is an excellent idea. He did seem overwhelmed, and admittadly it is a lot. I wouldn't expect it all at once but this is where we have to end up and I have to see progress and change. I'll sit down with him again tonight and start having that conversation. I want him to be successfull. I want US to be successful. And I'm willing to put the work in and to also help support him, but he will need to do the same.

Commenter 2: I think you should remind that if you divorce he will have the same problem with the next person. Does he feel ready to keep having his parents ruin his relationships?

OOP: That is an excellent point! I think his mom is at least partially responsible for some of his earlier relationships ending. I'll make sure to point this out!

Commenter 3: Nothing you’ve written is wrong or unfair, but it’s already not looking good for you. He admits that he knew he messed up and was terrified that you were going to ask for a divorce, but is also freaked out and stressed about the idea of putting hard boundaries or distancing himself from his parents. There are only 2 ways I see this going: 1) this man will fail at putting up boundaries with his parents, you will resent him for being the spineless mommy’s boy that he is, and you will get divorced or 2) he will succeed at putting up boundaries with his parents, he will resent you for making him choose between you and his parents, and you will get divorced.

OOP: #2 did occur to me, and I fully believe it is a legit concern and possibility. But I feel like this is my last chance to try and turn this around. If it happens, that is on him. And I think it will just show that he'll never be ready or able to have an healthy, adult, romantic relationship.

Commenter 4: My advice to you is start calling it out and explaining it in the moment.

She calls and he jumps to take her call: "Name, this is our time together and you are once again prioritizing your Mom over us."

He divulges private information: "Name, would you like me going and spreading private information to my family about you? Because what you are telling your Mom is PRIVATE. Adults keep that information within the confines of marriage just like sex."

You need to find that couples therapist and set up the appointment ASAP. Tell him the date and time and tell him if he is serious about saving the marriage you expect him to be there and you expect him to show up weekly. Lay it ALL out for the therapist.

OOP: Thank you for this advice. I've always hesitated to do this because I didn't want to come off as a nagging wife, but I realize now I was just enabling the status quo. But you are right, we need to have some way of providing feedback to one another and being able to communicate in an open and healthy manner even if the underlying topic is toxic

OOP on how much personal information her husband shares with his mom

OOP: If my husband wants to tell his mom about his health, that is entirely his choice. But why does he need to tell her about my health/medical issues/Dr appointments/etc? Why does she need to know how much I earn or how much I have save up or how much I paid for my car or any of that? How is that her business? If we decide to take a trip why do we need to tell her how much we're spending?

And why does visiting her take priority over plans we made? I can't count the number of times we were doing something together where he bailed because she needed help with something stupid. Or the number of times plans got canceled because suddenly she wants him to come over.

If he wants to devote all his time and effort to his mom that is absolutely fine. But he can't do that and still be an involved father or engaged husband. What happens when our son is older and my husband has to choose between attending his school events or games or whatever. Because yes his mom won't be around forever, but our son won't be a child forever. What happens in 18 years when our son goes to college and my husband realizes he missed seeing him grow up because he was busy catering to his mom.

And I won't be a third wheel in my own marriage. I won't spend my marriage wondering what plans she is going to screw up or what decisions we make that she's going try and override.

It's not about sharing info or visiting. It's when those things happen to the extreme and impact our life as a married couple.

How old are OOP and her husband?

OOP: Early 30s

OOP should had addressed those issues before she got married to her husband

OOP: We absolutely should have addressed a lot of these issues before we got married. Or before we had kids. Or really at any time in the past.

But is it really a long list? I mean, they all boil down to the same thing - we both need to treat each other with respect and consideration. For example, my issue isn't him visiting his parents. The issue is when his visits conflict with plans we've made or activities we're doing or when they constantly take time away from our son. Before I accept an invite from anyone I always double check with him to make sure he doesn't have anything else planned, is it so much to hope he'd do the same for me? And once we do have plans, is it ok to have to cancel them because his parents want us to come over? This isn't one off stuff, this is constant.

OOP on her husband's background and how he was raised from her own parents raising her

OOP: The way my husband was raised is so different from how my parents raised me. I feel like I need to understand his upbringing better to understand why he feels like he needs to always defer to his parents, especially his mom. I do believe at the end of the day he alone is responsible for his actions, but understanding his past better might help me to be more empathetic and to have a better idea how to help save our marriage.

He hasn't told me a lot of details about how he grew up. He has told me that his mom has always been very pushy and domineering. He's alluded to getting in trouble for not getting good enough grades or not doing his chores correctly and got punished but he never said anything about how he was punished.

OOP on how her MIL has overstepped the boundaries

OOP: Thank you for the feedback! And I think you are right - I am conflating what I view as a normal healthy relationship with what I think is overstepping boundaries. I don't remember if I put it in a comment or a DM, but I admit that I did put that list together when was angry. As a result, I think maybe I was focused on the wrong things in some cases. Or maybe not the wrong things, but the wrong aspect of the things I listed.

For example - I legit think his mom calling 2x a day on our honeymoon is weird because my family wouldn't do that. But in retrospect, maybe frequency of calls wasn't the problem. Maybe the problem is that he let those calls cut into our time together while we were trying to do other things. If he had talked to his mom while I was in the shower or some other time we weren't busy, I might have thought it odd but it I wouldn't have felt like she was overstepping.

Likewise I complained about how often he visits them. But it's really because he allows those visits (or requests for visits) to take priority over activities that we were already in the middle of or plans we already made (e.g. Mother's Day).

I've said this several times, but I should have put it in my original post - those specific items are area's where she has caused problems. BUT - for the most part they all boil down to the same thing: I believe me and my husband show respect and consideration for each other and when there is a conflict or a question, our family should take priority. And since people on Reddit like to read everything as absolutes - even priority is relative. If his mom wants him to shovel mulch, that should be a lower priority than what we already planned. Not saying he shouldn't help, just that he doesn't need to do it right then and there.. But say his mom fell and hurt herself on Mother Day, or some other legit emergency came up, then absolutely THAT should take priority over going to the zoo. My frustration and anger and resentment comes from ALWAYS being a lower priority than anything his mom asks for.

For the record - NOWHERE did I ever say I thought he should cut them over or sever his relationship with them (something a lot of people have accused me of saying). What I want him to do is realize that now, in addition to being a son, he is also a husband and a father. And he needs to decide which of those things take priority.

Thank you for the great feedback and for the very valid talking points I can use with him. Ideally, while we are in couples therapy to help with the discussion.

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