My husband and I had been married for several years, and for most of our relationship, I believed we understood each other. We had built a comfortable life together, supported each other through difficult times, and talked about growing old together. But everything changed when his mother became seriously ill. She had always been an important part of his life, and when her health started declining, he naturally became more involved in caring for her. At first, I tried to be understanding. I knew she needed him, and I never wanted to be the kind of wife who prevented her husband from helping his own mother. However, as the months passed, I began feeling like I was no longer a priority in my husband’s life.

My husband started spending most of his free time at his mother’s house. He would leave work and go directly there, help with groceries, take her to medical appointments, prepare meals, and handle things around her home that she could no longer manage herself. Sometimes he would come home late at night, exhausted, and barely have the energy to talk to me. Our plans were constantly being canceled because something had happened with his mother. Even when we were together, his phone was always nearby because he was worried she might need him. I understood that she was sick, but I slowly began to feel lonely inside my own marriage. Whenever I tried to explain how I felt, my husband told me that his mother had no one else and that he couldn’t simply abandon her when she needed him most.

Eventually, my frustration turned into resentment. I started telling him that our marriage deserved attention too. I reminded him that I was his wife and that we had responsibilities toward each other. He said he loved me and was doing his best, but I felt that his actions were saying something completely different. We began arguing more frequently, and even small conversations would turn into fights about his mother. I accused him of putting me second all the time, while he accused me of making his mother’s illness about myself. The situation became even more difficult when I asked him to reduce the amount of time he spent at her house. He told me that he couldn’t promise that because her condition was getting worse and he didn’t know how much time she had left.

One night, after another argument, I finally gave him an ultimatum. I told him that something had to change because I couldn’t continue living in a marriage where I felt like an afterthought. I said he needed to establish boundaries with his mother and start putting our marriage first, or I would have to reconsider our relationship. I expected him to become angry, but instead he became strangely quiet. After a long silence, he told me that he had spent months trying to balance everything, but my ultimatum had made him realize that we wanted completely different things. He said he couldn’t choose between his sick mother and his wife, especially when choosing me meant leaving her without the support she desperately needed. I told him that I wasn’t asking him to abandon her, only to stop allowing her needs to completely consume our marriage.

A few weeks later, our marriage began falling apart for real. We started discussing separation, and eventually my husband moved out temporarily. What I thought would be a wake-up call became the moment that permanently changed our relationship. Looking back, I still don’t know whether I was wrong for wanting more attention from my husband or whether he was wrong for allowing our marriage to become secondary. His mother needed him, but I needed my husband too. The hardest part is that there doesn’t seem to be a simple villain in the story. There was a sick woman who needed her son’s help, a husband caught between two people he loved, and a wife who felt increasingly alone. In the end, the ultimatum I thought would save our marriage may have been the very thing that finally destroyed it.

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OOP is given an ultimatum: his wife or his mother

I am NOT OP. Original post by u/TWAFOR in r/relationship_advice

trigger warnings: miscarriage, ill parent

mood spoilers: sad, infuriating

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My wife (31F) asked me (34M) to choose between my mom (55F) and her ahttps://kenista.com/man-wonders-how-to-proceed-after-his-gfs-parents-make-a-facebook-group-that-could-ruin-his-life/nd I think I am going to divorce her. – September 22nd, 2022

A little background: my mum and dad were both orphans, my dad died two weeks before I was born, my mum didn’t really have a support system, so we were just the two of us. I never lacked anything because my mother worked all her life to give me the life I have today and didn’t even have time for herself to start a new life again. She did all the little jobs possible so that we didn’t miss anything. She deprived herself of food to give me food, I had very good clothes while she had none. I saw her make sacrifices again and again and always with a smile, frankly I always thought she was an angel dressed in a human body. The only time she yelled at me was when I was 16 when I saw her getting sick and working at the same time.

I wanted to help her by finding a job, but she was angry and told me it was not my job to take care of her and it was up to her to take care of me, she wanted me to get really good grades to get into the best universities it’s the only way I can protect myself when she can’t anymore. Even at university she didn’t want me to work, I had to be focused on my studies, but she wanted me to volunteer “so that I could be an adult who could do something with his hands”.

I met my wife there while both of us were volunteered. My wife is a good person, but she was never close to her parents or her siblings. Yet she adored my mother since she met her, there were times when I thought she loved my mother more than she loved me and we laughed about it, deep down, I think she was looking for the bond between mother and daughter that she did not have from her mother.

When I finished my studies, I found a job, we move in together, but she wasn’t confortable that I call my mom everyday (remind you those were 10 – 15 minutes call) but eventually she stop bring It on. Two years later I bought a house for my mother, because we never had a house in our name, we lived from apartment to apartment, so for all the sacrifices she made it was for me the least of it and it was non-negotiable, that’s where the problems started with my wife (then GF). She wanted me to think about us first, I told her my dream had always been to buy my mom a house since I was little and that’s what I had to do. But she complained about It to my mom. My mom didn’t even knew I bought a house for her as It was suppose to be a surprise for her birthday. she was unconfortable of receiving the house because of my wife and told me that wasn’t necessary that we could use It for us when we get married. I was furious, I told my mother that the house was for her that she could do with it whatever she wanted but it was time for her to think about herself first.

Our couple survived that, we got married and then we had our own house. Our life was going well until two months ago when my mother fell ill, I wanted her to come and live with us so that I could take care of her, but my wife didn’t want to, I then decided to rent an apartment with my own money right next to our house so that I could be close to her and go there to take care of her. But even that idea didn’t sit well with my wife. Me and my wife don’t have children yet, we both work, I usually come home at 6 p.m., but since my mother is sick, I go to see her and come home at 8 p.m. On weekends I see her for 1 or 2 hours and the rest of the time I spend It with my wife. We go on date, I always accompany her in her hobbies even though she never went to mine. Two days ago she told me that she thought about it and she thinks I prioritize my mother too much. She told me that I had to choose between my mother and the life I want to build with her.

The truth is that I never made her feel that way. We both work but I’m the one who cooks, and I pay a person to do the housework. I make sure I do the dishes she likes, she didn’t even know what I like to eat because I never complain. I run her baths, give her massages, flowers, I write her poems that I hide somewhere in the house for her to find out, we go on a trip one weekend a month, I earn much more money than her, I told her to keep her money for herself and I take care of all the bills even hers, I always make sure to listen to her and consider her opinion, and I think I am easy going because I can change my mind to accommodate hers, but I realize that she tries to completely dominate me and the only subject where I don’t give her a choice is my relationship with my mother. So there I’m going to have a talk with her and put some very clear bounderies, if she doesn’t want to, well, we’re going to divorce.

Just want It out of my chest.

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UPDATE – October 11th, 2022

Before confronting my wife I had time to reflect, and I came to the conclusion that I will never again let anyone in my life dictate the relationship I should have with my mother or the time I should dedicate to her. So I decided to answer the ultimatum, but first I wanted to know if there was another reason why she gave me this ultimatum, she replied that nope. I asked her apart from what she blamed me for was there something she wanted to tell me but couldn’t tell me. She said there was nothing and asked me to come to the point so I told her I wanted a divorce.

She remained frozen, I think she was shocked because she wasn’t talking, she was just staring at me. I tell her everything that was on my mind, that our values ​​are too different, I was going through the worst moment of my life, my mother was sick, we did several tests with her, we still don’t know what she’s suffering from, we don’t know her family medical history because she was an orphan. It makes me anxious to know that overnight I could find myself alone in the world, yes alone in the world because in these difficult times, I all I needed was her support but if my own wife thinks that I should give less attention to my mother who is sick and who needs me more than ever, it’s time to go to our separate way. She still didn’t say anything so I told her I’m going to a hotel for now and we’ll discuss later how we’re going to separate. I took some of my things and left.

The next day when I went to see my mother, she figure out something wasn’t right but I was not going to tell her I was separating from my wife because she could not bear our relationship, especially since she was sick like that, I didn’t want to add more torment to her. I never discuss my marriage issue with my mother anyway, so she does not know our problems and honestly, she adores my wife too much, and my wife behaves as if she was her own mother so I was not going tell her what she was thinking behind her back.

My mom ends up telling me that my wife didn’t come by that day, yes, my wife who asks me to reduce my contact with my mother was seing her every day and I never asked her to do anything for my mother. She calls my mother “mom”. When she gets sick, she used to go to my mother so she will take care of her, it used to hurt me because it’s as if I couldn’t take care of her, but she said that this was not the same the attentions of a mother are different. I told myself that it was her way of creating a mother-daughter bond that she never had and I understood her. She ever said her mother used to tell her that she was not supposed to be born, that she was an accident that she almost aborted her and regrets not doing it.

Only a monster could say that to her child. So I never said anything whenever she wanted my mother’s attention, besides I received enough love to share with whoever wanted. My mother after I left home to study became a foster mom for children. She always did until two years ago. I have always loved each of the children with whom I still keep in touch and whom I consider to be my siblings. Once a year, we all went on vacation together for a week, the children, my mother and my wife. I generally take two months of vacation of which the six weeks I devoted it to my wife but the two weeks that I devote to my mother and the children, it was too much for my wife.

Anyway, I’m rambling, so when my mom told me she didn’t come to see her that day, I went back home because I was worried, I found her in the bathroom with her clothes and red eyes like she was crying all along. Seeing her like that was unbearable, I helped her out, but this woman who have so much pride, collapsed in front of me with lot of crying I don’t know if it was an hour or two, but she kept crying, calm down crying again, I just stayed silent. She ended up telling me that deep down she never wanted me to involv any less in my mother life, she was always jealous of our relationship she was always jealous of the attention my mother gave to the other children, she knows that it wasn’t rational but she couldn’t help constantly striving to be number one in my mother’s heart. It was kind of a competition for her, so when I wanted to take care of my mom she didn’t want me to be the one taking care of her.

I was honestly furious without saying anything of course but I wondered if she was a psychopath or something? We are talking about a person who is seriously ill and she is thinking about her damn competition even if it means sabotaging the relationship I have with my mother and putting us in a situation where I wanted to divorce her. She told me that she was very jealous of me and that she would have liked to be in my place, if she had to choose she would have even chosen to be my mother’s child rather than my wife even if I was the love of her life and the only man she ever known.

She also told me that even if the world falls apart around me, I will remain stoic, that I live as if I don’t need anyone and that I give everything to others but I don’t know how to let others reach me and she never managed to get there, only my mother could get there. At that moment, I did not know what else to say, I was hooked on this idea of competition so that I did not immediately grasp the scope of these words. But I still listened to her to the end. I put her to bed until she fell asleep, then I went to sleep in an other room. In the morning she was acting like anything happened she was being herself she said I don’t have to pity. I told her It was out of love she was still my wife. She left to work and I do the same but decided to stay at the hotel from the time being.

During that time, I wondered what I could have done, acted or said to make her feel like that. Deep down I think she’s right, it’s a defense mechanism I’ve had since childhood, I’ve never stayed in one place longer to make friends, it was heartbreaking to every time we have to move between my 5 to my 15 I have moved more than fifty times, from apartment to apartment, from hotel room to hotel room, and since then I think I have always lived my relationships like a squat. I never unpacked and settled in because I knew at any moment I could be kicked out. But I thought with my wife I acted differently, but I guess not.

So I thought maybe we didn’t need to go that far, what we needed wasn’t divorce but therapy. Then this happened. a little over a week after our discussion, I was called from the hospital. my wife had been hospitalized, she apparently did not feel well. I went to visit her, but she didn’t want to see me. If you see the eyes I saw, I’ve never seen so much hate in just two eyes. I told her besties so she can have her system support because she didn’t want me there. I told my mom, she asked me what I had done to my wife so that she ended up in the hospital, and that I should not stress a woman who was PREGNANT.

I said what ? She told me my wife told her and asked her to keep it a secret because she wanted to tell me herself when she was ready. I don’t know what was going through my head, between anger that it was my mother who told me or happiness at having to be a dad for the first time and total confusion at the surreal situation. I went to my wife and told her I knew, but she looked at me again angrily and told me she had lost the baby and it was my fault.

In an instant, I just get the new my wife was pregnant but keep it from me, that I was going to be a dad and that we lost the baby and that she was accusing me of having caused something that I did not even know. She asked me to leave and I left. I always wanted children, very early on. My wife wanted to put her career first, I understood and accepted, I’ve been trying to convince her for years but without success, now she gets pregnant, she doesn’t tell me anything, she talks to my mother about it, and she says I caused her miscarriage. Since then, she says she didn’t tell me anything because she wanted to first confirm if I could deal with all the responsibilities I give myself and raise a child at the same time.

I don’t understand her, and I admit since then I have a fierce hatred against her. I don’t know how to look at her without having anger on me and I don’t want to hurt her with my words, I take care of her at home but we don’t talk to each other. I’m not going to stay with her, it’s not possible. I started a session with a psychologist, he told me that patience was my best weapon, that I shouldn’t make a permanent decision on emotions that could be temporary and that I should take time to see if there were things to salvage. Here is where I am. I don’t know if I’ll do another update, I took days off to be there for my wife and for my mother but I’m feeling pretty depressed and I just want to get away from all this bullshit right now.

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Reminder – I am not the original poster.

We Thought Our Marriage Was Strong Until Everything Changed

My husband and I had been married for several years, and for most of that time, I believed we had a strong and loving relationship. We had our disagreements like every couple, but we always managed to work through them. We had built a home together, made plans for the future, and supported each other through difficult moments. I never imagined that something outside our marriage would eventually become the reason we would question everything we had built.

The problem started when my husband’s mother became seriously ill. She had always been an important person in his life, and I knew from the beginning that he loved her deeply. When her health began to decline, he immediately stepped in to help her. He started taking her to appointments, buying groceries, helping around her house, and making sure she had everything she needed.

At first, I didn’t have a problem with any of it. In fact, I admired my husband for being there for his mother when she needed him. I understood that illness could change a person’s life overnight, and I didn’t want him to feel guilty for helping the woman who had raised him. I told him repeatedly that I supported him and that he should do whatever was necessary.

But as time passed, things started changing between us. My husband was spending more and more time at his mother’s house. He would leave work and go directly there, sometimes staying for several hours before coming home. When he finally returned, he was usually exhausted and had little energy left for me.

Our conversations became shorter. Our evenings together disappeared. Plans we had made weeks earlier were often canceled because his mother needed something. At first, I tried to be patient, but eventually I started feeling like I wasn’t part of his life anymore.

One evening, we had planned to have dinner together because it was our anniversary. I had spent most of the afternoon preparing everything and was genuinely excited to have some time with him. A few hours before dinner, he called and told me that his mother wasn’t feeling well and he needed to go to her house.

I was disappointed, but I told him I understood. He promised that we would celebrate another night. Unfortunately, this became a pattern. There was always another appointment, another emergency, another problem that required his attention.

I began wondering where I fit into his priorities. I didn’t expect him to stop caring for his mother. I simply wanted to feel like his wife again. Whenever I tried to explain this, he would tell me that his mother was sick and didn’t have many people who could help her.

That answer made me feel guilty for even bringing up my feelings. I knew his mother wasn’t choosing to be sick. I knew my husband wasn’t deliberately trying to hurt me. But knowing those things didn’t make the loneliness disappear.

One night, I finally told him that I felt like I was becoming a stranger in my own marriage. I explained that I missed spending time with him and that I missed feeling important to him. I wasn’t asking him to abandon his mother. I wanted him to find a way to balance his responsibilities.

My husband became defensive. He said he was already under enormous pressure and that he didn’t need his wife making him feel worse. He told me that his mother depended on him and that he couldn’t simply walk away because I wanted more of his attention.

His words hurt me deeply. I wasn’t asking him to walk away. I wanted him to understand that our marriage needed attention too. But every conversation about the issue seemed to turn into an argument.

Things became even more difficult when his mother’s condition worsened. My husband began spending almost every day with her. Sometimes he would come home after midnight. On weekends, when other couples were spending time together, he was usually at his mother’s house.

I started eating dinner alone. I started going to bed alone. Eventually, I stopped asking when he would be home because I already knew the answer. Our house became a place where two people lived rather than a home shared by a married couple.

I tried suggesting practical solutions. I told him we could hire someone to help his mother with some of the household tasks. I suggested asking relatives to share the responsibility. I even offered to help occasionally myself. But my husband insisted that he needed to be the one there for her.

I respected his loyalty, but I couldn’t ignore what was happening to our marriage. I began feeling angry, even though I knew his mother wasn’t responsible for the situation. That anger slowly turned into resentment.

Eventually, I reached a point where I couldn’t keep pretending everything was fine. During another argument, I told my husband that I felt like I was always coming second. He replied that his mother wasn’t competing with me and that I shouldn’t treat the situation like a competition.

That statement made me realize how differently we viewed the problem. To him, he was simply taking care of a sick parent. To me, our marriage was slowly disappearing while he was doing it.

I told him that I needed something to change. I wanted regular time together, clearer boundaries, and some assurance that our relationship still mattered. He promised that he would try, but nothing really changed.

A few weeks later, we had our biggest argument yet. I was exhausted from feeling ignored and emotionally abandoned. In the heat of the moment, I gave him an ultimatum.

I told him that he needed to start prioritizing our marriage or I would have to leave. I said I couldn’t continue living in a relationship where I felt like I was constantly waiting for my husband to have time for me.

I expected him to fight for our marriage. Instead, he became completely silent. After several minutes, he told me that he couldn’t make the choice I was asking him to make.

He said his mother was sick, and he didn’t know how much time she had left. He said that if he reduced his involvement with her simply because I demanded it, he would regret it for the rest of his life.

I told him that I wasn’t asking him to abandon her. I was asking him to remember that he had a wife who also needed him. But by that point, the conversation had become too emotional for either of us to communicate properly.

A few days later, my husband moved out temporarily. He said he needed time to think about everything. I thought the separation would make him realize how much he wanted our marriage. Instead, the distance made both of us realize how broken things had become.

We eventually began discussing divorce. There was no dramatic betrayal, no affair, and no single moment that destroyed our relationship. It was simply two people who wanted different things during an extremely difficult period of life.

Looking back, I still struggle with my decision to give him an ultimatum. Part of me believes I had every right to ask for attention and commitment from my husband. Another part of me wonders whether I should have been more patient while his mother was seriously ill.

My husband still cares deeply about his mother, and I don’t believe he ever intended to hurt me. But I also don’t believe my loneliness was imaginary. I needed my husband, and he needed to be there for his mother.

In the end, our marriage couldn’t survive the pressure. What began as an attempt to ask for more balance eventually became the breaking point between us. Sometimes there isn’t one person who can be blamed for everything. Sometimes two people can love each other and still reach a point where their needs, responsibilities, and expectations no longer fit together.