AITA for breaking up my dads friendship of 14 years with one of his best friends.

A 20-year-old woman navigates a complicated situation involving her father and his longtime friend, Chris, who began making inappropriate comments towards her as she reached adulthood.

After enduring two years of disturbing messages from Chris, she finally confided in her mother, leading to a confrontation with her father and the end of Chris’s friendship with him. Though her father supports her decision, she feels guilty for the fallout, questioning whether her disclosure was worth the consequences.

AITA for breaking up my dads friendship of 14 years with one of his best friends.

Here’s a backstory, my dad ( 46 M ) and his best friend, we will call him chris ( 32 M ) have been friends for 14 years and some change, they met at work (chris is a cop) and got close ever since. Mind you, this friend of his has been in my life since i was about 6-7 years old.

I am now 20. Chris goes to every single family party/events so I am always seeing him, while under the age of 18 there was no really interaction between him and I. A simple hi and bye, maybe an occasional side hug but never really held a conversation. As soon as I turned 18, I was in a relationship already for a little over a year.

Chris had decided to follow me on instagram, saw nothing weird of it. I follow most of my moms friends on social media so I didn’t really see an issue with following chris as he’s been in my life for so many years and I felt comfortable with him.

Over time he would like my stories that I would post of myself, again I still didn’t really see anything of it. I would tell my mom and she would say to brush it off because chris is known to be a “weird” guy. whatever that meant. But that’s when the comments started to come into play..

he would slide up with heart eyes or make small comments about how beautiful I look and that any guy would be so lucky to have me. All I would really say is thank you or just like his message, I didn’t really know how to take the compliments nor did I want to engage any further.

A year later when I turned 19 the comments became more and more.. disturbing. He would tell me to sit on his face, that he wanted to put his kids in me, he wanted a family with me, trying to convince me to get into a relationship with him and that my dad would “learn to adjust to it”.

When id ignore him or leave him on read he’d send me constant sad emojis and ask why i hated him, if he was too ugly for me, what he did wrong, why i didn’t want to be with him.

I was too afraid to tell my parents because the last thing I wanted them thinking was that I was insinuating this type of relationship and or ruining my dad and his friendship. This went on for 2 years until my 20th birthday this year in may, he made a comment about how he was my birthday gift and to go and see him at his home.

That was my breaking point and i decided to tell my mom, at first she just kept saying how chris has always been a weird guy and to ignore him. Until I told her all the explicit comments he was making, she get so upset and told my dad right away.

My dad was absolutely livid.. he confronted chris over a phone call where chris told my dad quote on quote “i know it was wrong of me, that’s why i never spent the night at your place or else i knew i’d be tempted to do something”. my dad told chris that he had thrown 14 years of friendship down the drain and had blocked him on everything.

As did my mom and all of her friends, my dad also told all of his coworkers who then blocked chris as well. I can’t help but feel so guilty.. my dad reassured me and was so hurt that I didn’t feel comfortable enough to tell him sooner. but i could also tell he was hurt for losing someone he considered like his little brother.

Even tho this happened 2 months ago, i still feel like complete s*it and wonder if i would’ve never told anyone that they would still be friends and i would just deal with chris’ vulgar comments.

i didn’t expect this many people to care nor read this but i’m just making some small tweaks to what people are asking. i did tell chris that my dad would not be happy if he found out he was messaging me inappropriate things and how i’m too young for him, chris would just say that the age doesn’t matter and if the feelings are true then why stop from trying.

i didn’t block him right away because i saw the man all the damn time, the last thing i wanted was for him to confront me in person or go out of his way to make another account to message me.

for those saying why i never spoke up sooner, i told my mom immediately when i noticed chris started liking my stories and she was the one who would tell me to brush it off so i felt like this was just normal? as far as the age gap between him and my dad when they first because friends, honestly i have no idea. 

don’t ask him details about his life and friend choices, most of my dads coworkers are all younger then him and call him gramps or old man i guess there’s just more younger guys. and for the comments regarding my mom and if chris used to say things to her, he absolutely did.

he’d tell her how beautiful she is and how lucky my dad is and i’m sure more that she keeps from me but she did inform me that my dad warned chris and set a boundary, after that he stopped.

(another note, after everything was revealed. chris told everyone that i led him on and made him think we were going to be something “real”) 😐

thank you all so much for the kind comments and support, i’ve gotten better about not beating myself up over this. also very sorry if my story telling is rough.. this is my first time ever using reddit. i’ll get better at it lol

(let me add one more thing. my dad is a ticket officer meter maid they like to call it and a security officer for concerts and what not) him and chris met when they were both security officers which is why chris was 18 at the time and later on became a police officer

Here’s what people had to say to OP:

KagomeChan says:
I feel like no one here is understanding how difficult it is to admit something like this is happening.

Like, forcing the words out literally feels like throwing up.

That’s not a reflection of you or OP’s dad. It’s a fact of a shitty situation, so please don’t make it about yourself, you know?

Doing so only makes OP (or clients, etc) feel worse, as if she hurt her dad and now owes him an apology. She’s the victim in all this, and doesn’t need more guilt.

100thusername says:
Hijacking the top comment, as a parent let me tell you your dad is 100% not sad about losing that asswipe as a friend, he is sad he brought a terrible person into his home and exposed his child to this horrible experience. That piece of s*it meant nothing to him compared to what you mean to him. You don’t need to feel bad or blame yourself at all.

Honest-Layer9318 says:
So many stories of parents not believing kids and/or siding with harassers. Some even going as far as blaming the young person being harassed. Even the mom was dismissive at first. Nice to hear a dad stick up for their kid for a change.

morepineapples4523 says:
I’m not going to downvote you. I thought of becoming a fireman. One of the things that convinced me not to was r/marriage. Oooohhhh. They are complained about with irregular frequency. Also I just love fire, and am fireproof (as in burn pads work wonders on me and I am lucky as f*ck). I don’t need or want to be a first responder for s*it, I’ve seen enough of that in my life. And I don’t want to live with all these assholes. Good up on it. Thanks r/marriage for helping me understand my career goals.

The_Razielim says:
I mean, the recruiting criteria basically spell out “low IQ meatheads who enjoy punching down”… Is it any surprise that’s what the process selects for?

I had been hassled by cops through HS, but always wrote that off as “well, I hung out with the punky/goth kids and all we did was loiter at the park near school and smoke… Of f*cking course. That was their job.”

I think where I actually lost faith in police was after college when all the r*cist meatheads I went to school with growing up who loved to f*ck with people as a group… Almost all of them ended up going into the NYPD or FDNY.

MidnightMarmot says:
Oh totally. She mentioned already that the dad had to set boundaries in regards to his wife. He knew the guy was a c*eep. At least he stepped up in both cases to protect the women in his life even if he did introduce the danger.

ParrotDogParfait says:
That is very true, so ultimately it just comes down to how much you trust he won’t escalate any further.

So you take it to the cops, they belittle you throughout the entire process and then constantly harass you afterwards so now you regret going.

Or you don’t go and he escalates the situation and then when you finally do go to the cops they belittle you and ask why you didn’t go sooner.

You just can’t win, the “justice” system in this country is s*it.

Bhimtu says:
It is ABSOLUTELY p*edatory, and proceeded as if he’s done this sort of thing before, and in my comment I was like, someone needs to bring this to the attention of his superiors. It is obsessive-compulsive beyond being p*edatory.

It even smacks of something like the trolling phase of serial predators. They get caught up in their fantasy, superimposed as it can be over reality. And they can become dangerous when rebuffed.

Cops are supposed to go thru some pretty rigorous psyche-evals before ever being passed thru the academies to become full-fledged law enforcement officers.

This is disturbing behavior, and mark my words, unless he gets therapy, he will DO IT AGAIN. Just with some other guy’s daughter….!!!