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It’s a common thing nowadays for a kid’s parents to not be together. Because the truth is that the damage of living within a family with two parents who don’t love each other and are staying together ‘for the kids’ can actually be way more serious than those parents separating and finding new lives without one another. It gives the kid the chance to split their life between two loving households, two happy families, instead of a single, resentful one.

But that’s not to say that such things aren’t painful in the moment: witnessing the breakup of their parents can do serious damage to a child’s psyche, if the changes in the child’s life aren’t handled with love, support, and unwavering sensitivity and kindness. The child needs to know that they are still loved, and that they haven’t done anything to cause the breakup, because to a child’s mind, as it tries to make sense of an adult world and situation that they don’t understand, any kind of conclusion can be jumped to.

This is why many parents seek out therapy for their child when the parents are splitting up. And credit to the parents in this story, who immediately got a therapist for their daughter when they chose to break up. As a result of their proactive and caring approach, things went well and the daughter adjusted to a life split between two homes, until a stupid decision by her parents changed everything.

Read on to find out what happened.

AITA for telling my daughter to butt out of my personal life and asking her to stay with her mom?

My ex-wife Holly and I (both 35) have a 16-year-old daughter named Shea.

Holly and I started dating when we were fourteen, and divorced 1.5 years ago. The reason was she felt like she hasn’t experienced dating since we got together so young, and she was getting curious but didn’t want to step out on me. So I agreed to not hold her back and we divorced.

We immediately got Shea into therapy, and she handled the whole thing really well at first.

Well I started to date, it was weird but kinda exciting. Shea was happy for me and encouraged me to go on dates. But then, everything changed.

Read on to find out what happened to change things so suddenly.

Holly and I spent the night together eight months ago, and my daughter found us the next morning.

She was giddy.

We explained to her that we weren’t getting back together, that we just have a very strong bond and are best friend, but she shouldn’t have found out.

Ever since Shea has been a nightmare.

Here are some examples of what she did.

I was dating a teacher from her school and she tried to sabotage it. Shea would show up on our dates (we track each other’s location). She would constantly bring up her mom in front of the girl I was dating. She was rude to her.

Eventually we split because she didn’t want the drama.

For the past eight months, Shea has been sending me pics of her and her mom in workout classes. She keeps telling me about Holly’s new fitness.

Holly has lost weight and she looks freaking incredible. But I kept telling her that me and her mom are better apart right now.

But then, the situation took another turn.

About four months ago, Holly called me. She admitted to drinking a bottle of wine and saying some stuff to Shea. She told her the reason we split up and that she regretted it and wanted the family back together. And that she was done dating because she hated it.

I sat down Shea and explained to her again my stance. That I absolutely love her and her mom, and that their was definitely a possibility of reconciliation down the line. But at this point I was having fun.

So I started to see Shea’s friend’s mom around this time. We kept it from the girls until we thought it was real.

Shea freaked out. She cut off her friend. She sent my girlfriend a lengthy Facebook message that basically said she was wasting her time, and that I was in love with my ex.

I talked to Shea about how inappropriate that was, and we got her back into therapy.

Finally, he felt like he had to put his foot down.

Then, last week, my girlfriend was trying to get something from my house, and I wasn’t home but Shea was. My girlfriend knocked on the door, and Shea saw who it was and wouldn’t open the door.

I called her told her to open it, and she refused. I had to run home from work to let my girlfriend in.

I was furious with Shea. I basically told her that she needed to butt out of my personal life, and that maybe it would be best if she stayed at her mom’s (we don’t have a formal custody agreement) for awhile, until she could accept that I was dating.

She left and I called Holly. Holly thinks I’m being a jerk.

AITA?

It’s clear that the daughter is really struggling to understand and process the breakup between her parents, and the dad is right. Seeing them briefly reconcile eight months ago has clearly caused her further psychological distress, and that’s on them.

For real, it’s great that her parents have been proactive in getting her into therapy, because it’s clear that she needed support external to her parents.

And sure, it might be nice to imagine a world in which Shea was okay with her dad’s new girlfriend, but honestly, giving her hope for a reconciliation, then dating people directly connected to Shea’s life would be mind-boggling enough for an adult, let alone a sixteen year old.

Let’s see what folks on Reddit made of this.

This person agreed that no one – especially not the adults – is being mature here.

While others called him out for giving her hope for reconciliation.

Meanwhile, this Redditor encouraged him to date people outside of Shea’s circle.

Sure they put her into therapy, but these parents really seem to have underestimated the psychological damage that a parental breakup can do to a teen. Fine, she might want her parents to be happy, and was clearly supportive when she thought that they were, but the hookup has done significantly more harm than good here.

For just a moment, she saw a brief glimpse of what reconciliation might look like, and the idea of her parents being happily back together clearly flipped a switch in this poor girl’s mind. They gave her a taste of family life being back to normal, and of course she was going to latch onto that. And when her mom drank a bottle of wine and inappropriately confessed her feelings to her teenage daughter? That only furthered the damage, with the daughter throwing her full weight behind urging her parents to get back together, thinking that they could all be one happy family again.

So why is she so mad at her dad and any woman he dates? Isn’t it obvious? Shea sees her father, and his girlfriends, as the only things standing in the way of her family unit being reunited. It’s no wonder she’s angry and is trying to sabotage things, because she thinks it’s for the best. Yelling and punishing her for that shows a complete lack of understanding for what she is going through, and her generally benevolent intentions.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a cashier who was rudely confronted by a teenager, only to have the teen’s father step up in an unexpected way.