A teenager turned to Reddit to share her apprehensions about dealing with a situation where her father was unfaithful to her mother. Despite the apparent awareness within the immediate family, a heavy silence loomed over the matter.

When she publicly confronted him in front of the extended family, the situation took a sharp and unpleasant turn. Not everyone rallied behind her, and she found herself questioning if her approach was indeed the wrong one.

My Dad and I have never had the best relationship. He’s never really been around, he has a job high up at some bank so he works super long hours and goes on lots of business trips. Siblings and I were basically raised only by my Mom, and I’m really close with her. We barely talk and when we do it’s about how s*** my grades are in school that I’ll never amount to anything if I keep it up, I try to avoid being around him.

As I got older (I’m 16 now), I started noticing my Dad’s weird behaviour. I remember a few months ago he came home super late and I could smell a little perfume on him. I didn’t really think much of it until he left his phone on the table one day and a text notification popped up saying “last night was amazing, can’t wait to see you again” and a bunch of cringey a** emojis. I was pretty shook when I saw that message ngl. I told my Mom about what I saw and she didn’t look surprised at all. She got pretty emotional which I felt bad about, and told me not to worry and that i should just worry about being a kid and let her take care of the rest, so I just let it go cause I didnt want to hurt her more.

So on to what happened. Last night we all went to a big dinner at my grandparents house. During dinner, my cousin was telling everyone that he had gotten a new job at some software company. My Dad took the opportunity to call me out and say I should follow after my cousin, and focus more in school. I just ignored him and kept eating. My Uncle agreed saying how hard it was to get through to young people nowawadays, and my Dad said it’s because there was no respect and I never respected him. I was so tired of his s*** and without thinking I said back, “hard to respect you when you openly cheat on Mom and don’t even try to hide it”.

Everyone went silent, and my Dad looked beyond pi**ed. He asked my Mom wtf I was talking about and told her that she had spoiled and ruined me. They started arguing and then after a couple minutes of everyone else trying to calm them down, my Mom told me and my siblings that we were leaving and told my Dad not to come home. When we got home my phone started blowing up. On the group chat I have with my cousins they said I was a massive d**k for publicly airing private stuff. I also got a few texts/voicemails from my Uncles telling me I ruined my parents marriage and that I should stick my nose out of adult s***. I felt pretty guilty about what happened and apologized to my Mom. She said that she understood my frustration and I probably should have expressed it better privately but what’s done is done. I’ve also gotten a few calls from my Dad but I’ve ignored all of them. He hasn’t come home yet, probably staying at one of his mistresses houses.

I still feel pretty bad about what I did, just wanted to get him off my back and was so frustrated with his hypocrisy. AITA?