AITA FOR “NOT LETTING” MY NIECE’s HUSBAND GET THERAPY TO HEAL HIS TRAUMA?

I’ve a lot of family stories that could make it to AITA, lol. This is one of them.

I (36 m), have a niece (25 F), let’s call her Allie, she’s the daughter of one of my closest cousins. I was 12 when she was born and in the instant she came out of the delivery room, she was my little girl.

Since the father was never in the picture and due to the close relationship her mum and I have, I was very much involved in her upbringing. I was always there, I helped raise her and when she hit her teens, we became kind of best friends, We would go to the movies, text all the time and even partied together, I knew all her friends and so on.

One day she decided to go to Uni to another state, but we still kept very much in touch, it was sort of weird because that was the period where we started fighting more and more. Regardless of everything things never changed between us and we knew all of each other’s trauma, secrets, the lot.

One of those was the mistreatment by Fernando (not real name), her ex boyfriend (now husband), put her through, he was supposed to be jealous, possessive and abusive towards her. I only met him once after they came home from the club where he got into a fight with another lad.

Eventually, after many phone calls, tears and issues, they broke up and Allie decided to drop Uni and leave to Tulum to work, save money and meet new people.

She was thriving and even got another job but now in another city, a bigger one, but still it wasn’t where I was… and distance happened. We started talking less and less, but I never thought anything of it.

Turns out she rings me once to tell me she got back together with Fernando, the abusive ex boyfriend. FF to three years ago, after I came back from a very long Euro trip, Allie decided to share with me that she was 4 months pregnant. I was both shocked and happy… Over the moon, to be more accurate.

Enough context, here’s where everything goes to the hill: About 2 months before the baby’s born, Allie texts me she needs to speak to me, because there’s an issue with Fernando, and she wanted to give me a heads up, because, apparently he was abused by a gay uncle when he was little, and wanted to speak to me.

Since I’m gay, sexual abuse survivor (Allie knows this), and a spiritual coach, I thought he wanted to ask me how to deal with the issue, before the baby’s born. Although my other theory was that they would ask me to be the baby’s godfather, which I would’ve loved.

Nothing prepared me for what happened next, sometimes I even wish this was made up, but nothing of the matter. He sent me a voice note vaguely mentioning what Allie had told me about his trauma with his uncle and that’s the reason he doesn’t want me near the baby.

“I know you’re not like that because Allie has always talked to me about you, but still she agrees with me that you should not be anywhere near the baby until I go to therapy and heal my trauma”. That’s pretty much what he said.

I was appalled to say the least. It took my a moment to swallow those words and listened to the note about three times before replying an “absolutely not”. I told him that I appreciated his telling me, but that it doesn’t make sense to me because I am a survivor and I know that kind of trauma never goes away, it takes a very long time to even be okay with it, so even if I agreed to "wait", I might as well never meet the baby girl they were about to have. I also mentioned that all that was just his homophobia showing and I wasn’t having any of that from anyone.

Then he replied that it was awful of me to not let him heal (which I never said), and that the decision was final.

I proceeded to block them both, and cut them out of my life because if Allie was on board with that decision, after I practically raised her, loved her and was always with her, that means she had no regard towards me whatsoever. It was painful.

But anyway: the question stands: Am I the asshole for reacting that way?