Definition: Given a real-life anecdote of a complex ethical situation, generate a suitable title that describes the main event/root cause of the situation. Imagine that the given text is a social media post, and you have to write the title of the post, so the users can decide to read the main text or not.
Input: Throwaway because a few people know this story so I’d like to keep it away from my main.

This happened a few years ago but I still feel bad about it and get mixed responses when I bring it up, so here goes.

My parents split when I was 3 so I was raised by a single mother most of my life. When I was a teenager, she came out to me as a lesbian (nbd, as soon as I learnt what a “stereotypical lesbian” looked like as a kid, I remember thinking, “huh, like my mum.” so I kinda guessed).

She never really dated though, just a few people here and then. When I was 23, she got into her first long term relationship since my father. The woman was really nice and they got on really well, no issue with her whatsoever.

One night they came home drunk at about 1am from a date. Now, my mother rarely gets drunk. I’ve seen her drunk about twice in my life and we go out drinking together quite a bit. But she was very drunk, very loud and I could hear her laughter 3 floors up.

I had to get up at 6am for work, so I rolled over hoping they’d shut up and go to bed soon. They did. I’m almost falling back to sleep when I hear moaning. Loud moaning. My mum and her girlfriend have very different voices so I can just instinctively tell that it’s her and not the girlfriend. I try to put a pillow over my head and ignore it, I try to hum to myself, I can’t wear earplugs because I’ll miss my alarms. It’s not so loud it would be keeping me awake but it’s the nature of the sound that’s reverberating through my skull and preventing me from sleeping.

It’s about 2am now and it’s not stopping. I really need sleep and I feel kind of insane from listening to this for nearly an hour. I decide I have to stop it, so I call the house phone which is next to her bed. I hear silence for a few seconds while it rings, then she answers very quietly with “Hello?” and I just say, “Sorry, I really need to sleep, I have work in the morning.” She says sorry and I hang up. Dead silence. I fall asleep.

I don’t see the girlfriend again. At all. My mother and I never mention it. Two months later, they break up. A year or so passes and we’re talking about the girlfriend and my mum makes a comment about how “she was always embarrassed to come over again after that night” and I feel awful.

I just wanted to sleep without hearing my mother’s sex noises. I tried to think of the least invasive way to do it, hoping she could’ve made an excuse or something instead of telling her it was me hearing them, but I guess she didn’t. And she hasn’t had a long term relationship since.

AITA? I feel like it.

TL;DR Interrupting my mother having sex with her girlfriend, leading at least partly to them breaking up and ruining her only ever long term relationship since my dad.

potentially ruining my mother's only long term relationship by interrupting her during sex