This woman lost her mother at a young age and grew up with a stepmother she loves and respects deeply.

Over the years, they developed a close, supportive bond—one both of them are genuinely happy with. The stepmother never pushed for a maternal title, and the relationship evolved naturally on its own terms.
But extended family members decided that wasn’t good enough.

Read on for the story.

AITAH for having never grown to see my stepmom as my mom and never reached the point of calling her mom?

My mom died when I (23f) was young (6) and my dad married my stepmom three years after my mom died.

My relationship with my stepmom is really good. I’ve known her since I was 7 and lived with her since I was 9. But I would see her more like an aunt figure. I

love her but I don’t ever see her as my mom or bonus mom, which is the term one of my aunts really wanted me to use because she thought it sounded more positive. My stepmom knows and is very understanding of this. She never tried to take on the role of my new mom and she never asked me to call her mom-ish title. I have my own unique nickname for her that’s just for me and she loves that.

She sounds very understanding.

There were comments made up and down over the years. They were never super pushy or consistent so I always hoped people would grow to understand eventually.

But lately my aunt and my stepmom’s extended family have been honestly kinda hostile. My stepmom and my dad spoke to them about it and they claimed they were imagining things.

But then I asked them what the attitude was for and they all mentioned that my stepmom has been in my life a long time and our relationship has grown so much but I still deny her the joy of hearing me call her mom.

Oh please.

My stepmom’s family members all said that I didn’t hate having her and yet I drew a line that I was never willing to reconsider and that it has been incredibly unfair to my stepmom who has to love me like a daughter and be loved as just an aunt figure.

My stepmom’s family took it further and said the fact I was 6 when my mom died, it offended them deeply that I would hold her in such high regard that the woman who actually raised me was denied the chance to be called mom and loved in the way a mom should by me.

They said they found it incredibly selfish to let her love me and to only love her back in a certain way that would never be enough.

Wait, WHAT?

I told my dad and stepmom about the talk after and they were angry at my aunt and my stepmom’s family.

My aunt told me I really didn’t care about my stepmom if I was willing to blow up her family when I know they’re all telling the truth. She said all these years later I should be able to love the woman who raised me as a mom and not simply as an aunt and I should be willing to call her the correct name which is mom because she has been more of a mom to me than my “birth mother” was.

I told my aunt to leave me alone after she called my mom a birth mother because she was a mom. She only got 6 years of parenting me but she was a mom. AITAH?

What began as subtle comments turned into open hostility, with relatives accusing her of denying her stepmother something she’s “owed.”

Now she’s asking Reddit whether holding onto her own definition of family makes her selfish, or if the problem lies with people trying to rewrite her grief.

This person says even as a step parent, OP is NTA.

This person agrees…everyone else is creating problems.

This person says this is not OP’s problem at all. NTA.

Love isn’t measured by titles, and no one gets to evict a child’s first mother to make room for their own comfort.

If you liked that story, read this one about grandparents who set up a college fund for their grandkid because his parents won’t, but then his parents want to use the money to cover sibling’s medical expenses.