Betrayal cut deep when a young mother discovered that the two people she trusted most—her boyfriend and best friend—had shattered her world by being together behind her back. Carrying the weight of pregnancy, she made the painful decision to sever ties with both, choosing to protect her unborn child from a love tainted by deceit and broken promises.
Years later, the echoes of that betrayal still lingered as her ex’s sporadic presence and her ex-best friend’s relentless attempts to claim a place in her son’s life reopened old wounds. Despite their efforts to rewrite the story with apologies and new roles, she stood firm, guarding her son’s heart against those who had once shattered her own.
AITA for telling my ex-best friend I don’t owe her anything including a relationship with my son?
As renowned developmental psychologist Dr. Gabor Maté explains, ‘Grief is the response to loss, and loss is inevitable. But how we grieve is shaped by the context of the relationship and the safety we feel in our environment.’
The OP’s boundary setting, while perhaps delivered with sharp language reflecting deep hurt (‘slutty ass’), is rooted in a necessary act of self-preservation and the protection of her son. The ex-friend’s actions—cheating during pregnancy, attempting to pressure the OP into a cover-up, and later adopting the ‘bonus mommy’ role—demonstrate a severe breach of trust and a lack of respect for the OP’s primary parental role. The ex-friend’s current grief over the father’s death does not automatically supersede the foundational trauma inflicted upon the OP. Her attempts to use fake accounts and harass the OP’s social circle indicate an unhealthy preoccupation and a failure to accept the loss of the relationship with the OP and, critically, the expected role with the child.
The OP’s actions were appropriate in prioritizing the son’s well-being and establishing firm boundaries against harassment. A more constructive future approach, once boundaries are set, is to focus solely on managing the logistics of silence (e.g., continuing to block without direct engagement) rather than engaging in defensive explanations, as the sister’s intervention proves. The OP owes the ex-friend no explanation or emotional validation; the relationship ended due to actions that directly harmed the core family unit.
REDDIT USERS WERE STUNNED – YOU WON’T BELIEVE SOME OF THESE REACTIONS.
The original poster (OP) is facing intense pressure from their former best friend, who not only betrayed them by sleeping with the OP’s partner while pregnant but now seeks continued access to the OP’s son following the father’s death. The central conflict lies between the OP’s justified need to protect their child from a source of profound past trauma and the ex-friend’s persistent, emotionally charged demands for inclusion.
Given the history of betrayal, the OP’s efforts to create distance, and the ex-friend’s subsequent harassment tactics, the question remains: Is the OP justified in entirely severing all contact and denying access to their son to maintain emotional safety, or does the ex-friend’s shared history with the child’s father—and her subsequent grief—warrant any level of continued, albeit strained, connection?
