The court became a battleground where truth and pain collided. While she fought with fierce resolve for sole custody, he wept over his inability to cope, twisting the story to cast blame and avoid responsibility. Yet, amid the sorrow and shattered promises, she stands resilient—a mother whose unwavering strength will shape her child’s future, no matter the cost.
My ex and I have one child together. We found out during my pregnancy that our child would be deaf, and wouldn’t qualify for the surgery that some deaf people are able to get due to a combination of problems.
While the external issue is a fluke, the internal issue is apparently something that I always had a 25% chance of passing down to a child.
Once I learned this, I made an effort to start connecting with the Deaf community in my area and learn ASL. He did not, and while he stayed for the birth, he moved in with his brother right after dropping me off at my home.
I own the house, and did before I met him, so it’s not part of the divorce. He was nice enough to give me 2 months worth of a cleaning service and a gift card to GrubHub.
He ended up telling everyone that I am the reason he doesn’t see our child, and that I filed for divorce because I overreacted. The truth is that I have sole custody because he cried, in court, that he couldn’t “deal” with the baby and wanted to just pay support.
While I did file, it was because he abandoned me and said so many horrible things that I couldn’t get over.
I have text messages he sent me which say that he wouldn’t have married me if he knew that we would produce “problems” and that he couldn’t handle raising a “r******” (the only thing wrong with her is hearing).
I don’t want my child to grow up in a home where she’s hated.
I was starting to hear all sorts of crap from my family and his, who started to take his side because divorce isn’t really a thing here, so I took action. I made a social media post publishing the text messages so that people would finally see the truth.
I’m now getting calls and messages for “making a private issue public” and “parental alienation”. AITA?
Conclusion
The original poster is facing significant emotional distress stemming from her ex-partner’s decision to abandon his parental responsibilities and spread misinformation regarding the custody arrangement. Her decision to publicize private, deeply offensive text messages was a direct response to external pressure and the need to defend herself and her child against accusations of overreaction and parental alienation.
The core question is whether exposing deeply hurtful private communications to counter a damaging public narrative, especially when protecting a child from perceived hate, justifies breaching privacy. Can the right to defend one’s reputation and protect a child outweigh the perceived obligation to keep a custody dispute entirely private?
Here’s how people reacted:
Add to this you have now put out into the public realm some pretty terrible things about your child that you now have no control over her seeing. How are you going to feel if she sees those words written and it causes her serious pain in the future all because you put them online? Clearly dad is an asshole when he wrote them and you are justified in telling whoever you’d like what was said, but to actually put them online is not only trashy, but has a pretty good chance of causing future problems for all involved. And it in no way makes your child’s life better. It’s petty and looking to get revenge.
Edit: anyone have discussion to disagree with specifically what I’ve said?
according to my basic genetic education, BOTH of you passed on the hearing issue to your daughter, him and you BOTH passed a morbid allele down to her. She got that morbid allele twice, which is why it is “expressed” and not “silent” in her case and she has the disability.
Short genetics explanation:
You were both carrying 1 healthy and 1 morbid allele for the gene responsible for her hearing. Since the morbid allele is recessive, aka weaker, neither you nor your husband have the hearing disability.
Unfortunately, what was passed down to your daughter by coincidence was twice the morbid allele, one from each parent, which is why your daughter can’t hear.
(this is oversimplified based on the little information in the post, feel free to correct me if you know more or i said something false)
But if people are blindly believing the stuff he spreads about you, then why do you want the toxicity of that in your life? Clearly they don’t care that much about you and already look at you rather negatively if they just believe him right off the bat.
Tell the people you genuinely care about, who will help you and uplift you, but fuck everyone else. Putting that stuff on social media is tacky and childish.
EDIT: Words. Downvote me, but responding to toxicity with toxicity doesn’t help, and OP is just giving those same people who think poorly of her more drama to talk about.
The people who are telling you that you should have kept this private most likely favor him to begin with, or are so old-fashioned that they believe that you, as the wife, are obligated to suffer in silence. As far as parental alienation goes, you aren’t lying and you aren’t trying to turn your daughter against him – you just aren’t keeping anymore of his secrets. Congratulations on your daughter! I just wish the circumstances weren’tso terrible. NTA.
Every pregnancy is a surprise in a way, you never really know how it will go or what the outcome will be. If you aren’t prepared for that, you shouldn’t choose to become a parent.
You did the work to learn ASL, he bailed. You have every right to correct the lies he told about you, and to expose his bigotry/ignorance.
I’m deaf in one ear, it’s not the same as being Deaf obviously, but I want to say there’s nothing ‘wrong’ with being deaf/Deaf and people who are hearing impaired can do anything (well nearly anything) an able bodied person can do. The only thing that holds people back is other peoples prejudices/refusal to accommodate.
Carry on with what you’re doing. You sound like a great Mum.
Supporting your every decision because i have a deaf cousin and my family loves her the most, she’s the one I’ll die for if needed because she’s gone through enough(can’t tell on reddit ). And i can feel what you are going through.
And he (your husband or ex-husband) is the real AH.
You and your child deserve every happiness in the world ❤. Don’t let it be gone for people who doesn’t treat you and your child right .
Or course he is TA for what he did- no questions asked.
But so are you. You ruined every chance your daughter still had to have a good bond with her father in the future. You published the story on the internet, for everyone to see, to remember, for her to find and for everyone to tell her and to remind her.
She may have inherited hearing issues from you, but let’s pray she does not inherit assholery from him.