Woman Questions Why Stepchild Isn’t ‘More Upset’ About Her Divorce from Their Dad, Believes They Should Be ‘More Broken Up’

Family relationships can get complicated fast, especially when divorce enters the picture more than once.

In a recent Reddit post, one user shared that their parents separated when they were 4 and finalized their divorce when they were 6. The split hit them hard at the time.

“I remember it being really hard and I was so upset when I realized my family was just never going to be a family again and I’d always have two,” they wrote.

As the years went on, both parents moved forward with new relationships. The user said their mother got engaged more than once, while their father remarried and had three more children. But recently, their father and stepmother “broke up a few months ago and decided to file for divorce.”

Even so, the Reddit user said they weren’t emotionally invested in their parents’ relationships after the initial divorce.

“I was never all that invested in my parents relationships,” they admitted. “I don’t get upset at them being with other people but I don’t look at those relationships as inspiration or anything like that.”

To them, whether those relationships worked out didn’t feel personal—until their (soon-to-be ex) stepmother assumed otherwise.

“She thought I looked at her and my dad as couples goals and that I saw them as a marriage I wanted to emulate and that I loved her and wanted us to be a family forever,” they wrote.

But the user didn’t see it that way, and when the divorce news broke, they weren’t devastated. “I haven’t asked to keep her in my life,” they added.

Things escalated when the stepmother confronted them in person—crying and demanding to know why they weren’t more upset “over the end of my family” and “why I wasn’t more upset that they were divorcing in general.”

The moment that pushed it even further was when she referenced the user’s reaction to their parents’ divorce years ago.

The stepmother “told me she heard how I acted when my mom and dad divorced and I was like duh, those are my parents and that was the end of my family.”

That blunt reply triggered a bigger fallout. “My response made her and my dad argue and she even called my mom to yell at her,” the user said.

In the comments, many people reassured the poster that they hadn’t done anything wrong—and suggested the stepmother’s reaction likely reflected her own grief about the marriage ending.

“These feelings she’s having are probably for your father and her marriage, but she redirected them at you,” one commenter wrote. “I wouldn’t worry about it too much.”

Others said the stepmother may have assumed she had a closer bond with the Reddit user than she actually did.

“She’s got a false sense of self importance,” another user commented. “And unfortunately in the time that you both have spent with each other she doesn’t seem to know you enough to know you are not close.”