Adult Child Says Forgiving Their Parents Didn’t Mean Letting Them Matter Again

A 26-year-old woman said she tried to forgive her parents after they pushed her to take back an ex who had hurt her deeply, but the reunion fell apart when they expected forgiveness to mean things would go back to normal.

The woman shared the situation in a Reddit post on r/AITAH, explaining that she grew up with what she believed was a good relationship with her parents and siblings. There were normal arguments from time to time, but overall, she thought her family was close and supportive.

When she was 17, she left town to study. After graduating at 22, she returned with her then-boyfriend, a man she called Joan. He was older than her, and her family immediately liked him. According to the poster, everyone in her family was thrilled when the couple got engaged the next year, even though marrying young was not common in her country.

Then she found out he had cheated.

She was devastated and went to her parents for comfort. At first, they supported her. But gradually, their response changed. Instead of standing firmly beside their daughter, they started encouraging her to take Joan back. They told her these things happen in relationships, that it was not the end of the world, and that Joan was still a good man for her.

The poster did not want to reconcile. She had made that clear. But her parents kept pushing.

Then, according to her post, they brought Joan to their house even though she had already said she did not want to see him.

That was when she decided to move in with her best friend.

For the next couple of months, the pressure continued. Her parents kept insisting, and Joan kept contacting her too. The poster eventually warned them that if they kept bothering her about him, she would stop speaking to them entirely. After that, her parents backed off for a while.

But Joan did not.

The poster said he began crossing more serious lines. He showed up at her work and her home. He sent threats to one of her exes and some of her friends. Eventually, she got a restraining order.

Her parents knew about all of it.

Even so, she later learned from her siblings that her parents were still talking to Joan and were speaking badly about her to relatives, telling people she was overreacting.

That changed everything for her.

The poster said she is not someone who needs one final confrontation to get closure. In her view, her parents knew what they had done. She did not need to explain it again. So she changed her phone number, told the rest of the family not to share information about her, and eventually applied for a job in another country just to get away from the whole situation.

After time away, she moved back to her country at the end of the previous year. She settled in a small city, found a comfortable apartment, started dating someone new, and felt like she had finally rebuilt her life.

Then, three months before writing the post, she decided to call her parents.

They were happy to hear from her. They arranged to meet, and according to the poster, they apologized over and over for what happened with Joan. They said they had viewed him as family and had struggled to accept that he was not who they thought he was. They admitted they were wrong and apologized for hurting her and failing to protect her.

The poster accepted the apology and agreed to stay in contact.

But privately, she knew her heart was not in the same place anymore. She said she mostly reconnected because she felt obligated by family, not because she truly wanted the old relationship back.

They kept speaking, but she did not visit. Then the holidays came up. Her parents asked where she planned to spend them, and she said she would spend Christmas with friends and New Year’s with her boyfriend’s family.

Her parents were upset. They pointed out that she had not visited and did not initiate conversations. That was when she decided to be honest.

She told them she had forgiven them because she felt obligated to do so as family, but they no longer had an important place in her life.

The phone went silent.

She ended the conversation by saying they could talk later, but the damage was done. Other relatives later told her she had stepped out of line and had been too cruel.

The woman shared the full situation in a Reddit post titled “AITA for telling my parents that even though I forgive them, they’re not important to me anymore?”: https://www.reddit.com/r/AITAH/comments/1plboma/aita_for_telling_my_parents_that_even_though_i/

The poster admitted she wondered if she could have handled it more gently. Maybe she could have simply said she already had plans and avoided saying the deeper part out loud. But she also did not want to lie.

She said she knows things will never be the same. What her parents did changed the way she saw them. It damaged her respect for them, her trust in them, and even her comfort when speaking with them.

She still loved them. That part had not fully disappeared. But love did not make the old closeness return.

The emotional weight of the story came from the difference between forgiveness and restoration. Her parents apologized, and she accepted the apology. But they seemed to expect the relationship to pick up where it left off before everything happened. The poster could not give them that.

To her, their betrayal had not been one bad comment or one awkward conversation. They repeatedly pressured her to return to someone who had cheated on her, then continued supporting him even after his behavior became threatening enough for a restraining order. When she needed protection and loyalty, she felt they chose him.

That left a mark that a simple apology could not erase.

By the time the holidays came around, her parents seemed to want proof that the family was whole again. She gave them the truth instead: she could forgive them and still no longer trust them with an important place in her life.

Commenters overwhelmingly sided with the poster and said she was not wrong for being honest.

Many said her parents broke her trust at one of the worst moments of her life. They argued that encouraging her to return to someone who had cheated, then continuing to speak with him after his behavior escalated, was not something that could be brushed aside with an apology.

Several commenters focused on her parents’ current behavior. They said the fact that relatives were now pressuring her again showed the same old pattern: the parents wanted her to behave the way they preferred, and when she did not, family pressure followed.

Others said forgiveness does not automatically mean access. The poster could forgive her parents for her own peace without giving them holidays, visits, emotional closeness, or the same level of trust they once had.

A few commenters said her words may have hurt, but they were not cruel in the way the family was making them sound. They believed she had simply stated the truth after being pushed to explain why she was not visiting.

Several people also warned her to move slowly. If her parents were truly sorry, commenters said, they would accept a gradual relationship and give her space instead of demanding immediate closeness.

The clearest advice was that trust has to be rebuilt through changed behavior, not demanded because someone said sorry. Her parents could regret what they did, but they could not decide how quickly she healed from it.

By the end of the discussion, the answer from Reddit was clear: forgiveness may open a door, but it does not put people back in the room they lost.