Over a decade ago, my mother ran over an innocent man and killed him. This man turned out to be my boyfriend’s father. We’ve been going out for 6 months and I just met his family for the first time, and that’s when I realized who it was. I will never forget his mother’s face. I saw her at the scene screaming and crying. I will never forget her. When I saw her in pictures, I didn’t realize it was the same woman I saw all those years ago. To make sure I was not being crazy, I made sure to search up the case and the name matched. I don’t know how to tell this to my boyfriend. Please help.
23 comments
This story is unbelievable, and I mean that literally.
But since reality is sometimes stranger than fiction, here’s what you do: You treat this as the mutual tragedy it is, sit your boyfriend down, and tell him, just like you told us. You show him the evidence. Then you let him decide what he wants to do about it, which can be anything from coming together as a couple to leaving you. And then you deal with the aftermath.
Are you sure you want to tell him? Are you sure you know how YOU feel about it, from the perspective of what happened in YOUR family? You’ve written nothing about how this affected your family or you.
You just have to tell him, there’s no easy way to do this. Be gentle of course, but there’s not much you can do to soften the impact.
Why did the crash occur? Was your mom driving incorrectly, or drunk or something?
I’m surprised your boyfriend doesn’t already know. Presumably, you have the same last name as your father. If you can remember his mother’s face, she probably can remember yours.
But, let’s assume he never looked into it, or shock prevented him from following it up. Ask yourself a couple of questions:
1. Do you think he should know? Or, to put it another way, is it fair for him not to know the relationship you have to the person who inadvertently killed his dad?
2. Are you prepared for the relationship to end? Because that might happen once he knows.
The challenge here is that I think you have to tell him. Call it informed consent. If you aren’t ready for the relationship to end, you aren’t giving him a fair chance: After all, he might choose to stay with you, but he should make such a choice with all the facts. Concealing that isn’t fair.
On the other hand, you could resurrect trauma that he has put behind him. That’s also not fair. But it may be unavoidable.
You don’t mention if your boyfriend told you about his father or not, so it seems like you figured all this out when you met his mom. I think you’ll need to meet him, at his place, for an important talk.
You can tell him that you realized this on meeting his mom, but that you believe your mom is the one who accidently ran over his dad. You can tell him that you are sorry for bringing up this topic, but that you wanted him to know the situation as soon as possible, so he could decide what he wanted to do. Offer to leave so he can have time to think about things; do everything to make it so that he has the choices here.
You know that you are not your mom. But the relationship may be too much for your boyfriend — or his mother — to handle.
How were you there with your mother but not with her in the car?
Do you still have contact with your mother?
I am unsure if this is real tbh.
If it is I’m going to go against the grain here and say you should end the relationship.
You are wading into the trauma of another family, the most devastating event of their life. EVEN in the scenario where your boyfriend accepts this and wants to stay together, EVEN if you guys are fantastic for one another, he and his family will always be reminded of what your mother did. How is Thanksgiving dinner going to go? What’s the wedding going to be like? Think your moms can ever be in the same room (between the despair his mom feels and likely the guilt this would bring to your own, I don’t think so). Hell maybe it doesn’t go well and you end up breaking up months or years down the line, then was it worth it to bring their trauma back to the surface?
I am sorry if this sounds harsh I am not judging or criticizing you but I am just saying these to have you think about this logistically. This is something they will never forget, and every time they interact with you or your mother they will be reminded of it. This isn’t a situation where parents don’t like each other and maybe their opinions can be disregarded, this is a situation where you are navigating the trauma of multiple people at once and likely hurting them in the process of doing so.
I think that you should break up. It sucks and you couldn’t have known this before and it doesn’t say anything about either of you, but even the most ideal outcome of this situation seems pretty terrible to me. Ending it now before it gets messier is the best course of action.
This sounds fake
Is this real?
Have you been watching the TV series “Flaked”, wherein the main character (unknowingly) dates someone who believes that he killed her brother with a car?
Did your mom go to jail?
Im normal all about never keeping secrets in a relationship… but yeah you take this shit to your grave and just break up with him cause the relationship has no future.
Ain’t no way this is real because. The odds of this to even be possible is literally .0000000000001%
4/7
Points for originality, but try to add more body to the story.
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This is so stupid.
Creative writing needs more body, just so you know.
You can do better.
You would in fact forget the face. We don’t remember faces like that. That’s not how human memory works.
If this is real (and I don’t mean that as a slight, I’m sure you can see how this is so remarkable that it seems untrue), this is above Reddit’s paygrade.
Pause the relationship, immediately. “Hey BF, I care about you deeply. I’ve uncovered a little trauma in my past that I’m not sure I can talk about yet. I’m going to need some space to process it.”
Get yourself into therapy. No matter what happens with the BF, this will bring back some of the trauma of the situation for you. That kind of trauma is best handled by licenced professionals, not idiots like me on reddit. They can help you process, and figure out if and how to move forward.
you need to beef this up more to make for a compelling story
There’s no scenario where this ends well for you, either the bf is gonna freak out and ditch you or the pressure from his family is gonna cause you to run. If I was you I’d find some reason to leave, better he thinks you guys were simply incompatible rather than that you’re directly related to his father’s murderer.
This sounds like a fake story, but if it’s real you need to let your bf know your relationship to him. It’s going to come out eventually, there is no hiding it. Even if you break up he will likely still figure it out eventually.
Someone just watched Dead to Me
You should write yourself out of the story.
Yeah nah relationship over
When it comes out unlikely rational thought will prevail