One Sentence To My Wife's Family Ruined Our Marriage. Was I Wrong To Say It?
In a recent Reddit post shared to r/AITAH (am I the asshole), site user LowRequirement5182 shared that he’d been having some issues in his marriage.
“Up until about two years ago, things were great. However, a disastrous move, a few family emergencies, and a totalled car have left us in a terrible financial situation,” he wrote.
“All our savings are pretty much gone, 401k’s empty, and we’re haemorrhaging money.”
He added that the couple had bought a three-bed house in a high-cost-of-living area in the hopes of housing their future kids there. Prior to the move, they’d been doing “amazing financially,” he said.
But they became so squeezed that children went on the back burner as “bringing a kid into this mess right now would kill us.”
OP (the original poster) set an ultimatum
Because money was giving the couple so much stress, the poster wrote he told his wife “one of two things needed to happen: We either sell the house or start making more money.”
Both parties were in low-paying jobs at the time, so the poster thought that meant they’d have to find different work altogether.
His wife loved her job and the house, so she tried to get a raise from her boss, which was not given to her. But in the six months since his ultimatum, the poster has found a new job and just signed a contract for 35k a year more than his previous role.
The post author claims his wife got annoyed because after he got the higher-paying role, he stipulated she’d definitely have to find a new job.
He stressed that without an added income on top of his pay rise, “Kids, the whole reason we got this damn house would be entirely off the table.”
Then, he and his wife hosted a dinner
The couple more or less blanked each other after the argument, but then the poster’s wife’s parents came over for dinner.
OP says his wife told her parents that maybe he’d stop complaining about money now he’d gotten his new job ― and what he said next silenced the table.
“I don’t know why I said it, but I replied, ‘Oh, don’t worry, Jen. I won’t have to worry about money a year from now because we’ll be divorced by then,’” he revealed.
“Things got quiet real quick after, and I excused myself. Her parents left shortly after, and she slept on the couch to avoid talking to me.”
He ended his post, “I’ve not talked to [his wife] or her parents since last night. Things are very cold between us right now, and I genuinely wonder if I did something last night that probably ruined my marriage.”
People had *thoughts* in the comments
Redditors didn’t seem to appreciate the poster’s approach to discussing his marriage.
“I don’t know why you’re so worried if you were wrong or not, you’ll be divorced a year from now,” one commenter wrote.
“You know how firearms experts tell people “don’t put your finger on the trigger unless you intend to fire?′ Yeah, don’t say the ‘D’ word unless you’re prepared to get D’d real hard,” another opined.
“I’m sorry, did you say, ‘I genuinely wonder if I did something last night that probably ruined my marriage?’” yet another site user incredulously asked.
“You told your wife you would be divorcing her within the year in front of her parents. If you can come back from that, it is going to be a LONG and HARD road. You have a right to be angry about everything going on, even a right to divorce her, but if you wanted to repair the marriage at all, that wasn’t the way to do it.”
What do you think?