Things get rough when you’re pulled in multiple directions by different family members.

This man promised his mom a trip, but then he realized that his wife was struggling mentally and physically. He made a decision to prioritize being with his wife, and he’s not sure how to make things right with his mom.

Find out all the details.

AITA for postponing my mother-son trip to support my wife?

I promised my mother (64f) that I (29m) go with her to Tanzania.

She’s always wanted to go, and talked about it for years but since she divorced my Dad (over a decade ago) hasn’t had anyone to go with.

The rules were clear since day one!

My wife (27f) pointed out that once we have children, the chances of me going on a 3-week vacation alone will be pretty low and by the time our children grow up, my mother might be too old to travel long distances – so I told my Mom I wanted to go with her.

She cried she was so happy.

The trip was booked for March.

My wife has been nothing but supportive.

This is where it gets bad…

Unfortunately, my wife and I have struggled to conceive.

We have been trying for 2 years and moved country recently, away from my mother.

I assured my mother the trip was still going ahead.

My wife and I recently had our first round of IVF and it failed. The doctors had been confident because my wife is still young but it didn’t.

They weren’t expecting this to happen…

My wife and I took this news hard – especially my wife.

I won’t go into the details but despite only being 27 my wife has some significant fertility issues. We found out that we are probably never going to have a child, even with IVF.

My wife’s mental health after the IVF failure declined and what made matters worse is the day we found out it failed, I had to go on a 2 week business trip.

My wife was left on her own, in a new foreign country, with no family or friends, starting a new job, grappling with this awful news on her own.

She was struggling a lot!

My wife lost weight and is now under supervision by a psychiatrist and psychologist and medicated daily.

When I came home I saw my wife was skeletally thin and struggling to get out of bed every day.

Leaving her on her own is not an option for the foreseeable.

I called my mother and explained the situation. I told her I wanted to delay our trip by 10 weeks so that my wife could finish her treatment and come with us.

Things were fine at first…

It was a win-win.

My mother gets her trip, I’m still a good son but most importantly I don’t abandon my wife. (Of course I offered to pay for all additional costs including new flights so my mother wasn’t out of pocket).

My mother was initially supportive.

She said she understood and thought the compromise was sensible. She even offered to come see us in our new country in March to give us support.

UH OH!

A week later, my mother called me and said she’s disappointed about the trip being postponed and that we had let her down.

She said with my wife coming that the trip would be different to what she expected.

She said she can’t handle the thought of it potentially being postponed again (we never said it would be) and no longer wanted to go on the trip at all.

Everyone was heartbroken!

She said she never wanted to speak about the trip either.

She cancelled the flights and asked my wife and I to refund her for everything, which we did.

Once we paid her back, she stopped answering my texts.

She hasn’t once reached out to my wife (who she’s known for 10+ years and knew how much children means to her) about the IVF, the trip – nothing. Or me.

AITA?

That sounds so heartbreaking!

Why did the mom insist on canceling the trip when she was initially supportive of the change?

Let’s find out what the Reddit community has to say about this story.

This user is coming from the perspective of the mother, and they’re not wrong.

This user thinks the wife’s weight might be an issue.

This user has evaluated the two scenarios.

That’s right! This user knows the mom still deserves a mother-son trip.

Exactly! This user believes the mother might feel like a third wheel on the trip if the wife tags along.

He needs to plan another mother son trip.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.