I think reddit is biased because she’s a “content creator”/influencer.
I have some comments but I’m waiting to let you read the rest of the posts here first, which might change your mind about something.
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This post is meant to clarify my position, and not primarily meant to respond to @lmf, who doesn’t seem to want to talk about the subject.
I only think she partially deserved it because of the context. The context:
- The person she depends on is a person one would be reasonable to depend on for some things, one of those reasonable things being managing time for arriving at events.
- They have presumably had this arrangement for 5 years, which is a long time to ingrain a habit. He has taken on some responsibility by not speaking up earlier and letting her get in the habit of depending on him, that is his fault. I think he can’t immediately quit the responsibility and expect her to change her habit quickly. He should at least be helpful in the transition.
- It’s her birthday, or birthday weekend. You expect people, especially those close to you, to be nice to you and take care of you.
- Watching her favourite artists is really important to her.
The last one matters because he had some responsibility and he had control over the situation. If she didn’t depend on her husband, but was single and was entirely responsible for her own time management, then the last two points (it being her birthday and being important) wouldn’t matter (obviously not the first ones either because they aren’t included in this context). In that case she would entirely deserve the consequences, because what happened would be the logical outcome of her actions.
If he had not said anything and just sprung it on her, then she would not have deserved the consequences at all. Even if there is risk in depending on your spouse for time management, it could be entirely reasonable and the right thing to do. Because he did tell her, and he let it happen two times before, she only deserves it partially.
This month alone, we’ve been embarrassingly late to events 2 times, and this time was the first she realized I hadn’t been honest about the timing because I used to give her an ETA 40 minutes earlier. A week ago, I told her I wouldn’t be doing that anymore and that I expected her to act like an adult and be more responsible.
I just realized that this means he didn’t tell her that he would stop “rushing” (probably just telling her ahead of time) them to events while not doing it for two events (at least one event). So he did spring it on her. He had only told her before the birthday concert. In that case I think she had no fault at all in the other two events.
I was in the downstairs restroom when she texted me saying I wasn’t welcome in the bedroom that night. I ignored her message and went in while she was changing.
My initially reaction was that it was definitely inappropriate, IIRC I shortly thought about whether it counted as SA, but without reaching a conclusion. I think it should have stood out more to me though.
I didn’t comment on this part of the story because I was sidetracked about thinking of whether he had the right to sleep in the bed. I thought it depended on whether he was in the right or wrong of the earlier stuff, so I focused on the other parts. Now I think that is wrong, I think I should have commented whatever my thoughts were anyway.
On who has the right to the bed: I agree with this quote:
Because it matters whether each of them thinks they are right. Even if one of them is objectively wrong, if they think they are right then they won’t and shouldn’t concede the bed. So I could say I think he should’ve slept on the couch, but I wouldn’t expect him to volunteer that if I knew he thought he was right at the time.
However given that she was really mad and he seemed more mentally stable at the time, he probably should’ve offered to sleep on the couch even if he thought he was right.
I agree with this as well:
I didn’t catch that one as evidence of him wanting revenge.
Now I find it likely that he walked in on her changing on purpose. And more likely that he wanted revenge.
I didn’t think of anything other than this either. I think all your examples are very typical and good points.
This month alone, we’ve been embarrassingly late to events 2 times, and this time was the first she realized I hadn’t been honest about the timing because I used to give her an ETA 40 minutes earlier. A week ago, I told her I wouldn’t be doing that anymore and that I expected her to act like an adult and be more responsible.
It wasn’t just one occasion, when he did nothing they were late two times before. I agree with your and @qwerty’s points about how he probably isn’t doing much and has bad time management himself. If he actually did a lot of work then he probably would have told it in the post. If he’s hiding something/not giving sufficient detail then it’s probably because it would make him look bad. Still it seems that if he doesn’t do that minimal work, then they arrive very late.
I think Elliot is right here after having read all the posts.
This is unclear to me. For her birthday, I’m unsure that he even actually told her what time the show started. I think maybe he held on to the tickets and withheld information. If she knew the start time, I’d expect her to have gotten upset in the car on the way there, or earlier, rather than only after arriving late (which, from memory, I think is what happened).
For the two previous times that they were late, I’m unclear on whether he changed his policy without telling her first, or he did his policy. Either way, it isn’t evidence that his policy is needed to arrive on time – either she was misled (policy change without notifying her) or his policy was used and failed.
I see no clear evidence that his policy is actually needed or was ever useful. I think maybe he’s just bad at time management, confused, a jerk, and doing something dumb that doesn’t actually help while taking lots of credit in his own mind. I think that interpretation is compatible with his own story, which is a pretty bad sign.
I think you’re accepting too much of his story. If she had posted her side of the story, instead of him posting, I think you might reach significantly different conclusions. But in general objective analysis should expect to reach the same conclusion (or conclusions that don’t contradict each other) regardless of which one side of the story one hears. I think this is really common on Reddit: whoever posts their side of the story has a much better chance to get commenters on their side because people just trust/believe the poster too much. (This is relevant to other things like news sources. Reading a left wing or right wing source doesn’t have to be biasing, but it usually is because people just believe too much of the side of the story they read. Also, if people read both sides, they’re often heavily biased for whichever side they read first.)
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I first read this as an email and thought that it was a reply to me. I was quite shocked and was scared/embarrassed/stressed because I thought I had accidentally insulted you and appeared intolerant. I also tie some of my identity to my pseudonym now, so I try to live up to the name.
I got calm when I couldn’t think of anything that I could have said (that was toxic at least), and I remembered that you are open to debate/discussion such that I could show it was a mistake/misunderstanding, or if I really had been toxic and passive minded then you would show me and I could correct myself.
That’s a major reason I wanted to join the forum. Even if CF was wrong on a bunch of things, if I had better arguments then CF people (especially Elliot) would be persuaded. I think it’s better to be an active minded and honest truth-seeker than to be correct but passive minded and dishonest.
That’s right, because if he had told her then she might’ve arrived at time.
I agree with this now since my last evidence was refuted (to be evidence, not necessarily that the opposite is true).
Yes, I was thinking that he was probably an unreliable narrator, but I thought “what can I do, I can only go off what he tells”. Well that is sort of true, but wrong. You can look for inconsistencies and make reasonable assumptions of what actually happened.
Do you mean objective analysis as in not making speculative assumptions, and rather saying “this part is uncertain, it could be this or that”?
Local comment (due it not being evidence anyway):
Oh, so it could have been that they used his policy and were late anyway (and blames her anyways). That could have happened. However I think this implies that he did change his policy without telling:
and this time was the first she realized I hadn’t been honest about the timing because I used to give her an ETA 40 minutes earlier.
I mean “this time was the first” should imply that he changed policy at least once before, right?
I mean if your analysis is rational and objective – if you’re doing skilled analysis and not making mistakes – then reaching the same (or compatible) conclusions regardless of whose side of the story you hear is one of the goals, objectives, success criteria.
Avoiding speculative assumptions and concluding “I don’t know” for some parts is definitely part of it.
I don’t see why that’s implied. I still think it’s unclear what happened.
(I made an edit to my post that you replied to before I saw that you replied.)
And being overly trusting when the narrator could be unreliable is irrational. I didn’t need to make clever assumptions, just be appropriately distrusting and I could’ve reached conclusions that wouldn’t contradict the story from the other perspective.
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Those two quotes from the narrator, is that him disliking aspects of his wife? Like he doesnt bring them up as points of discussion or criticism that he could have with her. It doesn’t sound like he even wants her to do those hobbies.
It’s sad that someone has a relationship with someone they don’t like.
Holy shit.
I read the story and my initial impressions were:
YTA.
Assuming the guy is a reliable narrator (which I doubt, more on that later): Wife has some behaviors that a husband could reasonably find frustrating. If he has tried to get her to change this and she doesn’t, repeatedly, that is an understandable cause for conflict. But his decision on how to handle this issue is super horrible and much worse than anything wife seems to be doing.
He seems to be very mean and intentionally trying to hurt her in a way very distinct from her behavior. It seems like he actively dislikes his wife, rather than loving her or seeing her as a friend and partner.
Examples of being mean and hating his wife:
She’s never noticed EARLIER because she’s too caught up with herself, constantly taking photos. That’s the reason she’s always late.
He sees her as conceited. And he uses inaccurate all or nothing language (“she’s always late”) which is a bad sign, especially in a relationship.
She has a decent following on Instagram and is looking to grow as a “content creator.”
He doesn’t respect what she’s trying to do with her life, he isn’t impressed, he thinks it’s not a legitimate job, and he wishes she would abandon it entirely.
This time, I wanted her to experience the consequences of her actions.
He wanted to hurt her. Especially considering what he reveals a bit later… the event he thought was a good time to hurt her was a birthday present she was looking forward to. So fucked up.
I expected her to remember our conversation and store that information in her head to plan accordingly.
He did not expect her to do this. He thought she would not do this, and would be hurt, and he was looking forward to that.
The whole time, I knew she was missing out on her favorite artist because she didn’t take me seriously. It was so ironic that I didn’t even feel like reminding her.
He finally enjoyed watching her do her job/hobby… because he was anticipating the moment she would be crushed by the realization she missed her birthday present.
This is somewhat like a serial killer who lies to his victim that they might be spared so that he can savor the look on their face when they realize they will be killed after all.
She said it seemed like I was liking the rise it got from her and asked why I couldn’t set my “ego” aside for one day. I told her this was on her, I’d already made it clear I wasn’t going to rush anymore, and she should have listened the first time and expected me to follow through, unlike her.
She sees her husband accurately and calls him out, and he tries to deflect.
There are more examples of mean stuff in his story, but I’m tired of looking at them. This dude is fucking gross.
Well, one more, because it’s important:
I was in the downstairs restroom when she texted me saying I wasn’t welcome in the bedroom that night. I ignored her message and went in while she was changing. She looked like she wanted to kill me, and I simply told her that her saying I’m not welcome was irrelevant because it’s my room too.
This is much more fucked up than what preceded it. Which was already very bad. At this point I am comfortable calling this guy an abuser. She should divorce him. And I think in general, Reddit relationship advice advocates divorce way too quickly on too little info. But not in this case. What a fuckhead.
Broadly, by his account, his wife’s worst behavior is that she is careless and rude (in one particular way), and doesn’t value his time enough or try very hard to change annoying behavior when asked. And by his account, he hates her and retaliates against her rudeness by actively trying to hurt her a lot.
Given that I think this guy is an abuser, and lies to his wife in his own version of the story, I think he is probably lying to us as well. He is probably even meaner than this. People on AITA are biased to paint themselves in a good light. This is his distorted retelling that tries to paint himself as the right one and he still seems like a huge asshole. The reality could be much much worse.
Okay, on to comments:
Holy fucking shit. What? I am surprised. I expected more YTA ,or ESH at least. I know some people HATE lateness so much that maybe they see it as on par with spousal abuse and might say ESH.
But so many of the top comments are NTA and taking this guy’s side against his wife. This is depressing. People really hate women, especially women that have instagram followings.
I’m sad now, not reading any more comments.
Reading Elliot’s comments now. All quotes below are Elliot, not the reddit asshole:
getting a lot of bad vibes from him tho
Strap in buddy.
But yeah, seriously. Right off the bat he gave nasty vibes in the way he described the situation.
dear god YTA
Yeah that part at the end is like an order of magnitude worse than the already bad stuff before it.
here i am wondering if that counts as SA and comments are strongly on his side
Yeah this was shocking.
this has gotta be systemic misogyny. and the commenters are mostly lefties not Republicans, so it’s society-wide
Yep, I agree.
And from an Elliot comment further down:
My reaction to the post was that one guy was a jerk. I wouldn’t have shared the link here just for that. It was the comments and upvotes being on his side that stood out to me a lot more than the original post. So if the one guy being a jerk part isn’t a true story, it doesn’t make much difference to me.
Yeah, I agree. It might be ragebait, but the comments are depressingly revealing anyway.
Re: Ragebait…
I think the wife being an instagram influencer is relevant. Both to possible ragebait and to the nasty reaction by commenters. I think a lot of men, especially men online, hate women with Instagram followings. Adjacent to why they hate women with OnlyFans followings.
They think these are fake jobs enabled by pretty privilege. And they resent finding these women attractive and wanting to view their content because that gives the women views and kinda demonstrates that they are actually real jobs.
So I think some amount of the hateful response might specifically be due to that. If the story was that his wife had ADHD and was chronically late because of that, I think a larger amount of responses would be YTA or at least ESH. But I’m not confident how big the difference would be because I underestimated how horrible the reaction would be originally.
Typo? Meant YTA not NTA?
This passage was the subject of some disagreement in this thread.
Yes, typo, my bad. I’m going to go edit that after I send this.
I expected more YTA comments initially, though I was prepared for plenty of ESH, because I am aware some people really really hate being late. I am also aware of reddit (and general) misogyny but I didn’t anticipate it to this degree.
I have not scrolled through the comments in this thread much yet, just the first few after I read your thoughts.
I am not sure I understand what the quotes mean without more context… I guess lmf thinks that the guy barging in on his wife is not sexual assault? I think I agree that I wouldn’t typically call it “sexual assault” specifically, but I do think it was abusive behavior and his wife could reasonably feel threatened by it.
I am going to read some more of the comments and get a better understanding of that exchange. I might comment again after I do.
I agree with these comments. I am going to post the reddit guy’s comment as well to analyze:
Reddit Asshole:
She’s never noticed EARLIER because she’s too caught up with herself, constantly taking photos. That’s the reason she’s always late.
There are two things he’s doing here and both are shitty.
The first thing Elliot already talked about. He says the reason she is late is because she does influencer stuff. He gives many indications he hates that she does influencer stuff. He hates that she has interests and a hobby/job he doesn’t like. So he blames that. But people are often late for a variety of reasons.
The other thing he does that I don’t think Elliot talked about is: he says “she’s always late”
Statements like that are basically never true. They’re asserting too much. But they are especially bad in this context. Using all or nothing language in interpersonal conflicts, like with a spouse, is really damaging.
Common examples:
“You never ask about my day.”
“You always yell at me when we argue.”
“You never do the dishes.”
“You always take your friends’ side in disagreements.”
“You never take me on spontaneous dates.”
These are bad for relationships for several reasons. They are typically false. They ignore incremental differences. And they cut off opportunities to find a solution or improve behavior… the person being accused doesn’t have incentive to try to improve if they think their partner will not notice incremental improvements. They hold people to an unrealistic and false standard.
Broadly, they frame the situation in a very adversarial and combative way that makes it hard for both people to be on the same team and try to find a solution together.
These examples are a well known problem therapists talk about. They happen in other ways too (e.g. people use this kind of thinking internally, too. “I’m never going to be able to get up on time.”) But they are a common big problem in relationships.
And we can see that a lot of the ways this kind of thinking is really bad are apparent in the Reddit story, too.
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I think this analysis is really good.
I basically agree with all of it and we had a lot of overlap, but I think we each focused on a few different specifics. That made this especially interesting to read.
For example you talk a lot about time management and buffer times, and how he does a really bad job explaining what he actually has been doing that is such a burden. Good point! I agree but didn’t really think much about my own time management strategies when analyizing the post.
And you talk a lot about the part where he barges in. I thought his behavior was very abusive but didn’t quite understand why it might be construed as SA. I was mostly thinking about it in terms of him ignoring her request to be alone. I think that if someone asks to be left alone and you pursue them, that is really bad and has a high potential to be abusive behavior.
But I did not focus much on the “changing” part. The situation is not just him disregarding her request to be alone, not just him barging in and then ignoring her distress, not just him standing there smugly arguing why he is allowed to disregard her request… it is him doing all of that stuff while she is changing and plausibly naked.
I can see now how that could be considered some form of sexual assault.
Really good post. Thanks!
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One of the most illuminating things he shared in the book for me was when certain violent abusers say they lost control, and then he asked them “well why didn’t you kick your wife? you said you lost control, she was on the ground, you could’ve kicked her” or how he pointed out how quick people who lost control get in control when cops pull up.
Also, abusers who “lose control” often conspicuously don’t destroy stuff that they value.
Like, he will get angry and destroy dishes that he doesn’t care about (and his wife probably picked out, based on typical gender roles), or destroy his wife’s house plants, or punch a hole in the wall that his wife will cover up with a photo when trying to get the house ready for guests.
Some people genuinely do just have very poor anger management and “lose control.” You can tell because they do stuff like destroy their own video game controller or some other object they actually value. But often times, “losing control” is an excuse men (and sometimes women) will use to excuse hurting their partner.
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Something that comes to mind: I’ve gotten very angry before and have been violent (still probably am? I haven’t properly addressed it, its on a list of things to address but not a priority). Never hit anyone but got close enough anyways. I say this because during this time I kind of though of that angry part of me as a different person almost? I got angry and did bad stuff like hitting a wall. Was the aim of hitting the wall to scare somebody? Partially (not trying to shy away from it being bad. but I also was just so mad I thought I needed to hit something). But I think afterwards I think of myself losing control because I wouldn’t have done something like that unless I was angry.
Yeah thats one way to put it: I only would do certain bad things when I’m angry. Sure there’s a level of control there but I still only did it because something got me that mad. If something didn’t get me that mad I wouldn’t have done that.
Something that comes to mind: I’ve gotten very angry before and have been violent (still probably am? I haven’t properly addressed it, its on a list of things to address but not a priority).
Can I ask why that’s not a priority? In my experience, getting really angry can be a big problem in one’s life.
I’m not saying you should make “never get angry” a priority. I don’t think that’s a very practical or actionable goal anyway.
But the extent of anger you are describing… inflicting damage on things, getting close to inflicting damage on people, losing control, thinking of you-when-angry as a different person… those are all fairly serious in my view. Changing the way your anger manifests to remove some/all of those behaviors is achievable, in our society right now with a variety of known tools used by thousands (millions?) of people.