My dad had an affair 8 years ago. Mum and dad divorced.
The woman my dad had an affair with treated my mum terribly at the time. She sent my mum threats, she was so nasty. She used to text me as well in the middle of the night when she was drunk.
Fast forward to now, my mum has a new partner and my dad finally left that woman and is with someone new and I'm so happy to say, she is lovely.
My mum is and always will be damaged from the affair and the way it went afterwards. She still struggles with it all tbh.
Yesterday out of the blue, she received a Facebook message from the ow apologising for everything she put my mum through. She blamed it all on her mental health at the time. Basically none of it was her fault as she wasn't herself at the time.
It's thrown my mum totally. My mum had her blocked on fb and her number blocked but she's set up a new fb. My mum doesn't know how to take it. She hasn't replied. It's just brought everything back if anything.
I do know that she did suffer with mental health issues. I won't go into exactly what she did but some things were extreme. She tried to kill herself (though what she did wouldn't of actually killed her) and broke both her legs because my dad couldn't meet her one night. She had a drinking problem and was on very high levels of anti depressants.
She said she's in a better place now and she simply just wants to apologise but even though she's apologising, she doesn't take blame for any of it because of her state of mind. Her message was pretty pointless and has just made my mum emotional.
Tbh, I'm sure she's done it as my dad is in a new relationship and she's just trying to cause trouble but I haven't said that to my mum.
So this is my question, can mental health be an excuse to treat someone so badly?