I Cut All Ties With My Mother After Being Uninvited to My Grandmother’s Funeral and Now Everything Has Fallen Apart
There’s a particular kind of hurt when the person who gave you life is the one who makes it unbearable. That’s what a 27-year-old man, posting as u/anonymonkey_______ on Reddit’s AITAH, described after he cut off his mother and much of his family, including being uninvited to his grandmother’s funeral. His post reads like a catalog of long-term damage: physical abuse, emotional manipulation, financial betrayal, and a final, devastating act of cruelty that pushed him to sever ties. The story landed at a crossroads of grief etiquette, survival instincts, and the messy, unavoidable role a partner plays in family decisions.
The background: a childhood that never felt safe
He details a childhood spent on edge. His mother had him young and, according to his account, “has never been forced to take accountability.” He accuses her of cheating on every husband she’s had, bringing her children into those situations, and regularly exploding into “maniacal” behavior that destroyed relationships and stability. He says she physically assaulted him as a teen, punching, scratching, kicking, and that he attended school with a bloody eye. At one point, she left him in an empty house as a minor; after he finished high school living out of his car, she sold that car, one he says he paid for even though she was a co-signer, to buy a sports car for a new husband.
Those are not small grievances. The poster frames them as patterns: a mother who weaponized drama, financial control, and emotional volatility. He left for the Navy and rebuilt his life over six years, but the scars and distrust remained.
The funeral fight that changed everything
The post’s pivotal scene happened six months before he wrote. He visited his mother with his pregnant girlfriend, now the mother of his child. According to his telling, a screaming match erupted between his mother and his grandfather about his sick grandmother. He asked his mother to stop, concerned about his pregnant partner witnessing the familiar chaos. He says his mother “aggressively squared up” to him, then followed him upstairs, screaming at the guest room door. She sat next to his girlfriend and began crying about graphic past events. He called an Uber and, as they left, hugged his mother and said he loved her. As they neared the Uber, she allegedly started yelling insults and told him he was not to attend his grandmother’s funeral.
Being uninvited to a funeral is an extraordinary move, a punishment weaponized during a family death. The poster interprets it as the “ultimate nuclear option,” a deliberate and cruel blow that made him afraid to allow such a person near his own family.
The slow-burning aftermath: money, manipulation, and a partner’s divided loyalties
After that visit he says his mother only contacted him to ask for money and informed him she’d taken him off the car insurance he had been paying for. Messages, he says, bent toward gaslighting, attempts to make him feel guilty for leaving that day. He blocked her, got a new number, and yet his mother somehow obtained that number and contacted him again. The poster suspects his girlfriend might have been the source of the leak: his mother continued to speak to his girlfriend via Facebook and even sent baby supplies to their house, which his girlfriend accepted.
He’s now planning what he calls an ultimatum: be mine or be hers. He admits fear that his girlfriend will choose his mother, noting that past relationships ended partly because partners wanted a “normal” mother-in-law relationship that his mother simply couldn’t provide. He says life now is calmer without her in it, and wonders whether he’s wrong to want his child, and his life, shielded from that side of the family.
What Redditors said: support, alarms, and tough love
The Reddit reaction skewed heavily supportive. Multiple commenters labeled him NTA (not the a**hole) and urged him to prioritize his and his child’s safety. One top reply asked a practical question: “Is there anyone that could have given her your new number other than your GF that is still in contact with her on Facebook?” Another commenter was blunt: “Your girlfriend is messing up severely and you need to have a come to Jesus meeting with her,” arguing that a partner who keeps the toxic parent in play is actively undermining his healing. Others called the mother’s behavior monstrous and said cutting ties was a survival requirement.
Several comments mixed empathy with advice: tell your girlfriend everything, document incidents, and be ready to set firm boundaries. A common theme was disbelief that he tolerated so much for so long but relief that he finally chose peace.
The hard practical questions nobody wants to ask
This situation forces brutal clarity. How do you weigh blood ties against ongoing harm? When does cutting someone out stop being “dramatic” and start being self-preservation? The poster’s post is full of specifics that make those questions urgent: physical abuse that left visible marks, financial betrayal, repeated emotionally volatile episodes in front of partners and children. Those are behaviors that predict more of the same if left unchecked.
But there’s also the partner dynamic that complicates simple answers. The poster is rightly worried his girlfriend’s continued contact could expose his child to the same chaos he escaped. The dilemma is not just “mother or me”, it’s whether the partner understands the history and is prepared to enforce boundaries or will keep acting as a bridge that enables repeated harm.
What To Take From This
The clearest takeaway is that boundaries are not mean, they are safety. When a pattern of abuse and manipulation is as long and detailed as the poster describes, cutting ties can be a necessary, rational choice to protect mental health and a child’s wellbeing. If you’re in the partner’s shoes, ask for the full story and understand that “fixing” this isn’t a simple reconciliation; it’s a long process that may require counseling and a hard reassessment of what “family” looks like.
If you’re the one considering an ultimatum, try to have the conversation calmly and lay out concrete expectations: no sharing of personal contact information, no unmonitored contact with the child, and transparency about any communication. And if you’re watching this unfold in your own life, remember how many people on Reddit echoed the same practical advice, document harmful interactions, set uncompromising boundaries, and prioritize the safety and mental health of the next generation over the myth of obligation.
