After My Divorce, My Mother Stopped Talking to Me and Pretended I Didn’t Exist. An Overheard Conversation Revealed Who Had Been Destroying My Family for Years…

When I got divorced, my mom stopped talking to me. Completely. She didn’t call, didn’t write, didn’t answer my calls. I would visit her — she would open the door, look at me silently, and close it. It was as if I didn’t exist.

I couldn’t understand. I thought she was mad because I had broken up the family, divorced the woman she allegedly loved as a daughter. I tried to explain that I couldn’t stand the constant fights, infidelities, and lies. She would just turn away and stay silent.

Six months passed. I lived alone, trying to piece myself back together. My ex-wife quickly found someone else, moved on, and disappeared from my life. My mom continued to ignore me, as if I had died.

A month ago, I went to see her again. I hoped that time had cooled her anger. I rang the doorbell — no answer. But I could hear voices inside. She was talking to someone on the phone, loudly, emotionally.

I stayed standing by the door. I don’t know why. I just couldn’t leave.

And I heard it.

She was talking to a friend, her voice triumphant: “Finally got rid of that witch. You can’t imagine how many years I’ve been working on this.”

I froze. I couldn’t understand who she was talking about.

Mom continued: “Every time I visited them, I would plant something. I ‘accidentally’ found a stranger’s business card in her coat pocket. I showed him messages that I had faked on her phone while she was in the bathroom. I told stories about her ‘suspicious behavior’ that I had completely made up.”

My heart stopped.

She laughed into the phone: “He believed so easily! All it took was a couple of hints, and he would imagine the rest. I fed his brain with ideas, provided ‘evidence’, exaggerated every little thing. Every fight started after my visits, but he never noticed the connection.”

I stood behind the door, feeling everything inside me collapse.

Mom continued proudly: “He never realized that I was the one who destroyed his marriage. He thinks he made the decision himself, that she was bad. But in reality, I was pulling his strings like a puppet. And you know what’s the funniest part? Now he’s mine. Completely mine. No wife, no distractions. Just me.”

The friend asked something, I couldn’t make it out.

Mom replied coldly: “Of course, I’m ignoring him. Let him suffer, let him understand how I felt when he got married. Let him feel lonely and unwanted. Then I’ll ‘forgive’ him, and he will be grateful. He’ll do anything just to have me talk to him again.”

I don’t remember how I left. I just walked down the street without feeling my legs.

Everything I believed to be true for the past years was a lie. My wife hadn’t cheated on me. The ‘evidence’ I relied on — forgeries. The ‘coincidences’ I noticed — meticulously planned traps by my mom.

I started to recall. How mom always visited, and within a few hours, I would find something suspicious. An unknown man’s business card in my wife’s coat pocket. Messages on her phone I hadn’t seen before. Mysterious calls she ‘accidentally’ mentioned.

Each time I got angry, started a fight. My wife cried, swore that nothing had happened, that she didn’t know where it all came from. I didn’t believe her. I thought she was lying.

But she had been telling the truth. All this time.

I divorced her because of the lies I built up myself. Or rather, the lies my mother fed me.

Yesterday, I tried to find my ex-wife. Found her through mutual friends. I called. She answered coldly, a stranger’s voice.

I said, “I need to talk to you. I found out the truth.”

She was silent for a long time. Then she quietly replied, “It’s too late. You made your choice three years ago. You believed her, not me. That’s all I needed to know.”

She hung up.

I tried calling back — the number was blocked.

Now I sit alone in an empty apartment, understanding that I lost the woman I loved because of my own mother’s manipulations. She systematically destroyed my marriage for years to bring me back under her control. And she succeeded.

I called my mom. Told her I heard everything. She didn’t deny it. Calmly said, “She wasn’t right for you. I did it for you.”

I hung up and blocked her number.

But it didn’t make it any easier. Because my wife doesn’t want to know me anymore. Because three years ago, I made a choice — and I didn’t choose her. I didn’t believe, didn’t protect, didn’t try to understand. I just took my mom’s word for it.

If you were in my place — what would you do? Is it possible to forgive yourself for destroying a family by believing manipulations? And is there a chance to regain the trust of the person you betrayed without even knowing it? What would you do?

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After my divorce, my mother suddenly stopped talking to me, as if she had erased me from her life. For six months I tried to understand what was wrong and why she was so cold toward me. Yesterday I went to see her again and rang the doorbell – she didn’t open, but I heard her speaking loudly on the phone with a friend. I froze by the door and suddenly heard a sentence that took my breath away: “Finally! You have no idea how many years I worked toward this…” Her voice abruptly cut off and she fell silent. And I stood there, gripping the doorknob, unable to breathe…
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