Some people really like jokes and pranks, but the thing they have to understand is, if the person they’re tricking doesn’t end up laughing, the joke or prank wasn’t a good one.
If both people don’t laugh, it isn’t funny, agreed the “Am I the A**hole?” (AITAH) subReddit.
While out on their boat together, Redditor Dry_Cellist2768 was having a good time until her husband told her he had had an affair with someone.
Enraged, the Original Poster (OP) threw her wedding rings overboard, only to later find out that her husband had questionably pranked her about the whole thing.
She asked the sub:
“AITAH for throwing my rings in the ocean after my husband told me he had an affair, even though it was a ‘prank’?”
The OP’s husband recently told her something terrible.
“This is the dumbest thing that’s ever happened to me in my entire life.”
“This past Sunday, my husband (29 Male) and I (27 Female) were on our boat together. We were just relaxing and talking and having a good morning.”
“All of a sudden, my husband got really serious and told me, ‘Baby, I’m so sorry, but I have to tell you something. I’m so sorry, please forgive me, I had an affair.'”
The OP was shocked and immediately reacted.
“The way he said it, I fully believed him.”
“I was blinded by rage and hurt, and I’m not a confrontational person at all, so all I did was stand up, take my rings off, and throw them into the ocean.”
“I don’t even know why I did it, it was just the first thing I thought of doing.”
But it was apparently all a big misunderstanding.
“My husband’s jaw hit the floor. He immediately started to yell at me that it was a joke, a prank, that he wasn’t serious, and that I was an id**t.”
“For context, my husband thinks he’s a comedian. He says dumb s**t all the time, but he’s never joked about our marriage or relationship or cheating, ever. He does a lot of pranks but knows I don’t like them, so he usually doesn’t pull them on me.”
“My jaw dropped then too. I yelled at him too and called him the same. I cried too, realizing I had just thrown my lovely and sentimental rings into the ocean.”
The couple struggled to resolve the prank.
“We’ve been arguing for days. He says I’m the a**hole, I say he’s the the a**hole, and I have no idea who’s right.”
“Yes, admittedly, I threw about 10K worth of rings into the ocean, and we will never find them again, but he looked me in my eyes and told me he had an affair.”
“I am upset about my rings. I’ve apologized for throwing them. But I just don’t feel like I’m the a**hole here.”
“AITAH?”
Fellow Redditors weighed in:
- NTA: Not the A**hole
- YTA: You’re the A**hole
- ESH: Everybody Sucks Here
- NAH: No A**holes Here
Some weren’t convinced that this was a prank so much as a test.
“Was it a prank? Or did he really cheat, and when she reacted that way, he lied and said it was a prank? Which is the lie: I had an affair OR it was a joke?” – Wandering_aimlessly9
“It might also be real. Some people float potentially unpopular statements, and then if it doesn’t go over well, walk it back with, ‘I was just kidding.'”
“The husband may very well have had an affair and expected to be forgiven, but was ‘surprised’ by her reaction.” – Edward_Morbius
“Yikes, NTA. He brought up having an affair because he wanted to get a reaction out of you. He got one. He literally said the thing he thought would rile you up the most.” – Dazzling_Kitchen750
“I don’t think it was a joke or prank. He was testing the waters on how OP would react. And the ‘it is a prank’ excuse was an exit in case of very negative reaction.”
“I don’t know how he possibly thinks she is an AH. Even in the best case, what exactly had he thought she would do? Cry? And how would she react after? And how would it affect their marriage? What reaction would satisfy his ego and justify this ‘prank’?”
“I suspect this idiot was secretly recording it to put on social media and get more followers. In this case, it would be the end of my marriage.”
“He has balls and no brains by doubling down and insisting that OP is an AH here. I would remind him that he will lose much more than $10K in the case of divorce, and his actions are moving everything in that direction.” – Brave_anonymous1
“There have been many stories on Reddit where the OPs have described immediately falling out of love with their partner once they find out about their cheating; they all describe it as if every feeling and emotion just shuts off, most likely from shock.”
“They describe going through the motions to move forward (almost like a zombie). It is only when the papers are served and their stuff is moved out that they break down for the life they lost with a person they thought they knew.”
“OP’s reaction was pure shock: hurt and anger at such a betrayal. It seems like a very common and perfect reaction. NTA.”
“I do not believe it was a joke or a prank, though; the husband was testing the waters to see how OP would react to his cheating. OP should be taking some time to look at her husband’s credit card use and his phone usage. Does he ‘work a lot of overtime’?”
“OP’s AH husband either just gave her the biggest red flag that he is f*cking around or he, like so many of these idiot pranksters just caused major harm; in this case, he damaged his relationship with OP and continues to do so by doubling down.”
“They seem fairly well-off, so if I were her there’d be a private investigator up his a** so far, he’d find polyps.” – SummerIceCream3893
Others agreed and stated that nothing about this was funny.
“NTA. Your husband, though, good grief.”
“It’s hard not to assume someone with such poor judgment isn’t overall too stupid to love, y’know? There’s no way to approach this in which he isn’t just a catastrophic moron, what the f**k was he thinking and how, after the fact, can he think this is anyone’s fault but his own.”
“Dude is lucky he’s not newly single, and FYI, it’s not too late, because anyone that thinks this had any hope of being funny might very well be a lost cause.”
“I’d consider this d**n-near unforgiveable, personally.”
“Show your husband the replies. The man deserves to feel like a jacka**.” – Longwinded-Ogre
“She was stuck there on a boat with no way to escape him while processing all the emotions, before the rings sunk to the bottom of the ocean and after. What a completely unsafe location to be.”
“Eff that guy! Not funny at all. I would have started divorce proceedings immediately once on dry land.” – NoKnownAbode
“He claimed that he lied about cheating. So he is admittedly a liar, thus there is no reason to assume he is telling the truth about the joke.”
“So any ‘known variable by the husband’ cannot be trusted without evidence, which is difficult to gather in the moment and on a boat. Thus, (absent any adjustments based on his character), there is an exactly equal chance that he is lying about the affair or the joke, so there is a 50-50 chance.” – ZealousIdeal_Bag_325
“You know… I don’t think this kind of thing is funny, but I do understand that there are people who think it’s funny to annoy their partners, get a rise out of them, make them kind of mad…”
“I don’t think any of that is funny, but imagine this instead.”
“Imagine she’s not mad. Imagine she’s totally heartbroken at that moment, hearing that ‘confession’ from him. This is her HUSBAND saying he had an AFFAIR. Imagine she’s totally quiet, and then just breaks out in sobs, believing that her husband has completely betrayed her and her life is forever changed.”
“Their relationship flashes before her eyes, and then she suddenly feels sick as she tries to adjust to the idea that she will never have that love and security with him again. Her marriage is over. She doesn’t even know what her life looks like going forward. HA! IT WAS JUST A PRANK!”
“What kind of f**ked up prank is that? He fully deserves to be called out. He fully deserves to explain exactly why he thought that was an okay thing to do. He’s an id**t at best and an a**hole at worse.”
“Getting mad and throwing the rings was reasonable, and he clearly thought it would be funny to make her mad, not caring that it would also be incredibly hurtful.” – Puzzled_Medium7041
“NTA. As a husband of over a decade, I would never, ever joke about adultery or divorce.”
“If he wants to be mad at someone, he can go look in the mirror for playing such a dumb ‘prank.'”
“And secondly, he’s just playing with your emotions at this point. Are your feelings something to be played with whenever he so chooses? Is he allowed to absolutely crush you and claim it was a prank? NO.”
“These are not things someone who truly loves their partner would do. These are things a bully would do.”
“If he’s comfortable doing these things with your emotions how will he play with your future children’s emotions?” – burntllamatoes
Some also pointed out what a harmless prank or joke actually looked like.
“My boyfriend takes my bottled drinks if I’m not paying attention to hide them and blames the cat. Or he’ll wait behind a door and stare at me like a big, tall weirdo.”
“Those are not declarations of disloyalty like ‘joking’ you had an affair.” – SkyPirateWolf
“My boyfriend sometimes puts random stuff on the shelves around my desk to see how long it takes me to notice them. Last time it was a penis-shaped pencil topper and it took me about three days.”
“He used to have a habit of telling our Alexa to shut up once it answered his question and it was still talking. So I set a custom command so it would respond with, ‘I don’t shut up, I grow up, and when I look at you, I throw up.'”
“That one was great. The first time he heard it, he started yelling, ‘What?! WHAT?!'”
“In summation, OP’s husband sucks and doesn’t understand what a prank is. And is probably also cheating.” – SharMarali
“I prank my husband. Every April first, I tell him, ‘Honey, I need to tell you something important. Are you ready? Ok. Trish is not your biological daughter.'”
“Note that Trish is our cat. Also note that THAT is a prank.” – HyperFocusPocus
“I put tiny plastic ducks in my husband’s pockets, backpack, truck, etc once. He was finding little ducks for about a year.”
“It’s harmless and makes him giggle every time he finds a duck.” – on_my_last_duck
“One prank my brother played on his wife was putting googly eyes everywhere. After a week, she thought she got them all… until she had to go on her military base, pulled out her military ID, and the guard started cracking up because it had itty bitty tiny googly eyes over her eyes in the picture.”
“I’m grinning just thinking about that one. What some people find acceptable in a marriage is beyond me.” – mhck
“My boyfriend plays pranks on me. Like the other day, he kept slipping Andes mints into my coat pocket when I wasn’t paying attention and I’d stick my hand in to get my phone and find another mint. Once, he put a D10 (a ten-sided dice) in my purse and I found it a week later. Last year he kept hiding a giant stuffed dog around the house to startle me and make me laugh.”
“What her husband did isn’t a prank. It’s cruelty.” – aerynmoo
While throwing her rings into the ocean was an expensive reaction, the subReddit supported her and felt that the husband’s choice of pranks needed to be reevaluated.
Maybe it was time to prove a point by serving him with divorce papers and telling him that their entire marriage had been a prank.