Losing a partner is a heartbreaking experience that marks you for life. We can move on and form meaningful relationships with others, but one person never takes the place of another.
Redditor Efficient_Ad_7094 encountered this very issue with her husband. So she turned to the “Am I The A**hole” (AITA) subReddit for moral judgment.
She asked:
“AITA for asking my husband to not joke about my late wife?”
The Original Poster (OP) explained:
“Me (30f) and my husband (32m) Keith got married in 2019, 2 years after my wife Katrina passed in 2017.”
“Me and Katrina got married in 2015 but we started dating in 2012.”
“I met my husband in 2018 and we quickly started dating, he proposed on Christmas 2018.”
“But in the past 3 weeks he has been making jokes that me and Katrina’s marriage wasn’t real because we’re both female and about how ugly she was and that he would never be caught dead dating her.”
“I have asked him to stop but he keeps brushing me off the other day he made an especially insensitive comment about Katrina I was fed up so I blurted out ‘do you know how how fucking insensitive your being?'”
“He looked at me shocked and got up walked away he hasn’t been talking to me for the past 3 days.”
“I tried apologizing multiple times but he keeps saying that what I said really hurt him so am I the a**hole?”
Redditors gave their opinions on the situation by declaring:
- NTA – Not The A**hole
- YTA – You’re The A**hole
- NAH – No A**holes Here
- ESH – Everyone Sucks Here
Redditors agreed OP was not the a**hole.
“Please don’t apologize to him!” ~ schrodingers_cat42
“Never apologize to a homophobic a**wipe. Which is what OP’s husband is being right now.” ~ tulipbunnys
“EXACTLY !!!!!! If you are part of the LGTB queer why would you marry a homophobe??? It sounds so much like she marry due to grief depression.” ~ TrexEcuador
“In her defense it is very possible she genuinely didn’t know until he started making these comments on Katrina.” ~ ResponsibilityDue757
“I wonder if he’s been hanging out in certain right wing online communities lately.” ~ Spoonbills
“According to the OP’s comments, he has been going to church more recently and i’m assuming it’s one of those that are super homophobic.” ~ ResponsibilityDue757
Some people can be specifically bi-phobic.
“People who are not apparently homophobic, can still be exceptionally bi-phobic.”
“People can be real d*cks about bisexuality, especially if you settle down or get married, where most people seem to assume that you must have really been straight all this time, or gay all this time. Lived there, got the t-shirt, and have other close friends in the same boat with the same experiences. I am old now, married to a woman, and I’m still bi.”
“For those that don’t know, traditionally there’s been a LOT of bi-phobia within LGBT communities, actually especially within LGBT communities in my experience.” ~ jeweliegb
“As a cishet white male, it sort of doesn’t make sense to me. (Correct me if I’m wrong here) There isn’t much hate towards, say genderqueer/genderfluid people (from within the lgbtq+ community), despite some identifying as male sometimes, female other times, or even neither—I’ve never heard of anyone like that being called inconsistent or really just, say, a male all that time (again, from within the lgbtq+ community).”
“So why is it different with bi people?”
“I remember once seeing on tumblr that bi people in straight relationships shouldn’t consider themselves a part of the lgbtq+ community, which again, just doesn’t make sense to me. If nothing else, what does the ‘b’ stand for? Why ignore/bully/harass one of the foundational pillars of your community?” ~ mschellh000
“It’s important to keep in mind that the LGBTQIA+ community is a coalition. There are a lots of different people in the community, a lot of us are doing our best but yeah, some of us are bigoted towards other queer people.”
“Plenty of gay people refuse to date bi, pan, or trans people.”
“Some of the most transphobic bilge ever said to me was said by a gay man.”
“Plenty of gay people and bi people are enbyphobic. I’ve heard some say that non binary and genderqueer folk are ‘faking it’ and ‘making a joke of the LGBTQ community.'”
“So yeah, it may not may sense, they may not realize they’re being prejudice and sound a lot like casual homophobes, but they are.” ~ queersky
OP’s husband was still wrong.
“I’m sorry to hop on a top comment but I really need you to know:”
“OP, this is a common abuse tactic. Your husband has been deliberately pushing buttons trying to get an outburst out of you; then as soon as you said something he could pretend was hurtful or unwarranted (what you said was neither, btw), he acts hurt and offended and makes you earn his affection back.”
“It’s a way of training you to be submissive: if you say anything to call him out in any way, no matter how much he deserves it or how reasonable you are, he will frame himself as a victim.”
“And to make matters worse, eventually he’ll do this in front of other people, to create witnesses in his favor. He’ll poke at buttons until you’re close to getting angry, then in front of friends or family he’ll poke just the right button to get you to snap.”
“To everyone else, you’ll look unreasonable, because they won’t know all the poking and gradual torture that led up to that reaction; and in front of everyone, he will act reasonable and hurt, so that everyone thinks you lose your temper for very little reason and he backs down and does nothing to retaliate. Abusers groom their character witnesses as much as they groom their victims, and tactics like this are how he’ll use you to groom those character witnesses.”
“Get out now. No one who will make jabs at your deceased spouse or trivialize your past marriage (especially based on gender!) deserves any place in your life, and leaving will only get harder.”
“You should also know that abusers are really good at seeming like they’re going to change. When they see you starting to consider leaving, they apologize, find a reason it wasn’t their fault (they were cheated on in past, they’re insecure, they’d been drinking, whatever), and go over the top to seem like a good partner until you’re securely theirs again; then once they can get away with it, they test your limits again, until you’re close to leaving, at which point they again give you just enough for you to stick around.”
“Gradually, they do less and less to win you over, and more and more abusing, as you feel more and more trapped; you feel like you forgave them before so you have to give them another chance now, too, or you’re afraid to throw away the years you spent trying to work through the problems.”
“Getting out will be hard, but I honestly cannot think of a single scenario where the things he said could be okay, or could be fixed.”
“If he could ever say those things to you, then the absolute best case scenario is he learns to hide this side of himself; anyone who could claim your wife wasn’t truly your spouse has no respect or regard for you, no matter how much they learn to act as though they do.” ~ littlefiddle05
OP needs to take a closer look to her relationship.