Imagine being raised by your dad after your mom dies. If your dad remarried, would you eventually think of your stepmom as a replacement mom, or would she never be anything more to you than your dad’s wife?

In this story, one brother and sister grow up in a house like this, and they are fine with their stepmom, but they’ll never think of her as a mom. Their stepmom is not okay with this.

Let’s read the whole story.

AITA for not apologizing to my stepmom and bringing up that I think her and my dad’s expectations were unfair to me and my sister?

I (17m) have a twin sister Robyn (17f). Our mom died when we were 6. Our dad started dating again when we were 7 and we met our stepmom when we were 8.

When my dad and stepmom were talking about moving in together and getting married they asked me and Robyn how we felt about it and what worries we had.

We both said we didn’t want things to change a lot. That we liked going to our grandparents after school until dad picked us up after work and we didn’t want that to stop. That we didn’t want it to mean we’d have a new mom.

We were worried dad would stop talking about mom and we’d have to stop talking about her too.

Their dad and stepmom said all the right things.

They told us we didn’t have to see our stepmom as our new mom and we didn’t need to stop going to our grandparents and that it worked out good since our stepmom worked too.

They asked if we’d be okay with her picking us up some days and we said we were okay with that.

We talked about what we’d call our stepmom and we both wanted to use her name.

She told us there was no pressure but if we ever wanted to call her some kind of mom name she’d love that.

Dad assured us we’d still spend time with him.

Everything went fine at first.

After they got married dad talked to us again and asked where we’d want to be if something happened and he couldn’t take care of us.

We said our grandparents.

Dad told us he figured and that was always the plan but it was good to know it didn’t need to change.

We had a pretty good relationship with our stepmom.

Their family wasn’t like on TV.

It wasn’t like TV usually shows where we eventually started to see her as our new or second mom and started calling her some mom name.

It wasn’t a thing where we told dad we’d want to be with her if something happened to him. Or where our half siblings being born changed how we saw her or felt about her.

But we were never reality show levels of bad either where we hated her and wanted nothing to do with her. There weren’t epic tantrums or anything.

An accident changed their lives for awhile.

Two years ago dad got into a really bad accident and he was in hospital for four months and in a rehab place for three more months.

When that happened we went to live with our grandparents.

At the time we weren’t even sure dad would get better or survive. And we wanted to be with our grandparents.

Our stepmom didn’t say anything at the time but we did have to call our half siblings pretty frequently and stop by the house to show them we weren’t just gone forever. But it was tough because we felt more at home with our grandparents and needed them but our half siblings really begged for us.

Life didn’t exactly go back to normal.

Dad got better and came home and we moved back home too.

But after a few months of us all being home things were weird.

My dad told us one day that my stepmom wanted the four of us to go to therapy together and talk things through.

This stuff took a while. It was super hard to find a decent therapist and the wait lists were crazy. But we started therapy in January.

It turns out, going to the grandparents’ house, like they’d always said they would, wasn’t exactly okay with everyone after all.

I won’t go into every single detail but my stepmom is hurt that we moved out when dad had the accident and she wants us to apologize for not staying.

But my dad and her also said that they had expected we’d actually stay when faced with something like that. They didn’t think after all this time we’d actually move in with our grandparents.

She said we destroyed the family unit when we did it because our half siblings were hurt and so was she and that it made everything worse.

Dad said he just assumed after some time that if anything happened we’d stay where we were and he said it was hard to see our stepmom so broken up about the fact we didn’t.

Why would they apologize?

They said they had expected us to gradually feel way different and my stepmom said it was a wake up call that we don’t consider her our actual parent and she had expected that we secretly did and expected that it would grow over the years.

She said an apology would be a good start to fixing things.

I didn’t apologize and neither did Robyn but when asked by the therapist I said I thought my dad and stepmom’s expectations were unfair to me and Robyn because it meant all the stuff we talked about was really for nothing.

I said it put us in a bad place because they never asked if we’d changed how we felt or would do it different than we said before.

His dad is guilt tripping him.

The therapist asked my dad and stepmom to address it and she asked them some questions.

My dad said after therapy that it felt like I had wanted to shame them for being honest and he said an apology wasn’t a lot to ask for and me and Robyn not rushing to do it said we didn’t care about the hurt our choice caused.

AITA?

Their dad and stepmom asked them questions that they answered honestly and agreed on. It’s not their fault the dad and stepmom assumed they’d magically change their minds. The dad and stepmom owe the kids an apology for making a big deal about simply doing what they all agreed they’d do.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

Seriously, it would be better if they stayed with their grandparents.

Her assumption is not his problem.

They really need to let this go.

He does not have to humor his stepmom’s fantasies.

His dad and stepmom are the problem here.

The kids only did what they said they would do.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.