A woman on Reddit sought advice in the Am I The A–hole forum after her mother found out that her marriage was a “cover-up.”
In her post, the woman explained that she comes from a very religious family and so does her ex-husband.
“We have known each other since we were teenagers, and had grown together. After finishing HS we decided to leave the church together, but it would be difficult, since both our families were very strict,” she shared.
She said that her parents never gave up on trying to get her to marry someone from their church and kept introducing her to “older gross men.”
After her ex-husband told her that he was gay, the two devised a plan to get married to free themselves from the pressure of their parents.
“I had the idea of getting married together. Of course the real story is way longer than that, but I wasn’t interested in marriage and he wanted to keep his family happy, and since he was from our church my parents wouldn’t protest,” she explained.
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She revealed that the pair stayed married for four years, during which her ex-husband’s parents passed away due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“After everything was done (funeral, inheritance, etc) we decided to move far away and [lose] contact with a lot of people from our church. After some time he decided to come out and we agreed on divorcing since the cover-up wouldn’t be necessary anymore,” she said.
The two decided to play up the divorce for fun since they both enjoyed “theatrics.”
“It was funny seeing the reactions of the people, except for our new friends because we were honest about our arrangement from the beginning. He is now living as himself for the first time,” she shared.
She added that she also left positive comments on his posts with his new boyfriend as they celebrated Pride and that she was “so happy” for him.
Unfortunately, the woman’s mother apparently never changed her ways.
“Now, IDK how my mom found it but she texted me ANGRY asking why I was still [talking] to my ‘slur slur slur godless cheating ex,'” the woman said.
“I told her that I’m happy he is happy, but she still insisted, and then I told her that I knew from the beginning,” she continued.
“I just told her it wasn’t a lie to me, I came up with the idea. She called me a lot of names and said ‘I WILL MAKE SURE EVERYONE HERE KNOWS ABOUT YOUR BETRAYAL’ [and] I was just like ‘ok,'” she revealed.
The woman wondered if she did anything wrong because her mother “has been a good mother to me after all,” despite her bigoted views.
Many people in the comments section agreed that the woman did nothing wrong in trying to help her friend and herself.
“What you two did was very sweet, I don’t see anything wrong with what you did. You both helped each other in a time of need to extricate yourselves from a situation of hate and fearmongering,” one person wrote.
“As a gay man who enjoys the company of many wonderful straight female allies, I love you for this. For protecting him from his horrible family and the church and for protecting his spirit from being destroyed. I hope that you guys have a friendship you’ll cherish forever. You probably saved that man’s life!!” someone else said.
“Your life, your choices. Maybe if your families weren’t part of a cult that would treat people in a s–tty way for their life choices, you wouldn’t have had to do any of this,” another person agreed.
