It’s interesting, because we might all be human, and we might all need sleep, but some of us need wildly different things to help us go to sleep than other people.
Sometimes, what we need is quite literally wild, side-eyed the members of the “Am I the A**hole?” (AITAH) subReddit.
Redditor pizza_col_cazzo was perturbed by his wife’s new habit of sleeping to the accompaniment of loud whale sounds, which he not only didn’t find to be relaxing like she did, but the sounds literally prevented him from sleeping.
When he tried to reach a compromise with his wife, and she accused him of not respecting her needs, the Original Poster (OP) decided to distance himself from her and sleep in the car.
He asked the sub:
“AITAH for sleeping in my car because my wife won’t stop playing whale sounds at night?”
The OP found himself in a fishy situation.Â
“Okay, so this is weird, but I need to know if I’m in the wrong here.”
“My wife (32 Female) has recently gotten really into whale sounds. It started as something she played while working from home, and I didn’t mind.”
“Then, she started listening to them while doing chores, cooking, and even during dinner. Again, fine, I figured it was a phase.”
“But then she started playing them at night. I mean, full blast, speakers on either side of the bed, deep ocean whale calls echoing through our room like we’re sleeping at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.”
The couple responded completely differently to the immersion in marine nature.
“She says it helps her relax and feel ‘connected to nature.'”
“The problem is, I can’t sleep through it. I’ve tried earplugs, but I swear I can still hear them. I wake up to haunting, eerie moaning sounds and feel like I’m in some kind of deep-sea horror movie.”
“I asked if she could at least lower the volume or use headphones.”
“She refused, saying the sound needed to ‘fill the room’ for the full effect.”
“I even tried playing my own ‘relaxing’ noises to balance them out with rain sounds and white noise, but she said they were ‘ruining the purity of the ocean experience.'”
The OP couldn’t put up with the around-the-clock ocean experience anymore.
“After weeks of this, I finally snapped and just started sleeping in my car. I parked it in our driveway, reclined the seat, and actually got my first full night of sleep in weeks.”
“Now she’s furious, saying I’m ‘abandoning our bed’ over something trivial and making her feel guilty for trying to create a peaceful home environment.”
“I told her I’d happily come back if we could compromise on the whale sounds, but she says I’m being selfish and ‘refusing to understand her needs.'”
“AITAH for choosing my car over the call of the wild?”
Fellow Redditors weighed in:
- NTA: Not the A**hole
- YTA: You’re the A**hole
- ESH: Everybody Sucks Here
- NAH: No A**holes Here
Given the unusual nature of the OP’s situation, some Redditors couldn’t help but crack jokes.
“I’m not sure, but it seems like she’s being mean on porpoise. It must really hurt your sole to be driven out of your place. Don’t clam up, I’m urchin you to stop her musseling in on your sleep.” – Slight-Leg9635
“Whale sounds around the clock? Why doesn’t she just listen to podcasts? (Sea what I did there?). NTA.” – Dry-Bullfrog3778
“Find sounds of ships sinking, distress calls, buckling in half, and play those alongside her whale sounds. When she complains, let her know you’re being supportive and helping her achieve the ‘full ocean experience.'” – Long-Okra1415
“Maybe her language preferences have changed after so many hours of ‘the ocean experience.'”
“I speak whale; would you like me to translate what the whales are saying?”
“Teeeellll heeer tooooooo geeeettttt tthheee fuuuuu**k oouuut. I typed this in whale in case she reads it.” – Warzone2028
“Make a deal with her. Four days a week, she gets to listen to whales traveling 24 hours a day to nowhere, and for three days a week, you get to listen to Norwegian death metal 24 hours a day. Also on full blast. Prepare to go to the doctor for hearing aids within a week.” – spytez
“Wow, that’s WILD, coming from someone who is literally DOMINATING the situation with her own selfish choices… Does she always pick her own comfort over others’ or is this new?”
“NTA, OP, definitely not.” – Interesting_Ad_3319
Others took the situation more seriously and urged the OP to reconsider his marriage and advocate for his health.
“OP, you are NTA. Please read this over and over until it clicks:”
“Sleep deprivation has literally been used as a form of torture.”
“Sleep deprivation has literally been used as a form of torture.”
“Sleep deprivation has literally been used as a form of torture.” – Verdukians
“She’s performing torture by denying you sleep on an ongoing basis.”
“I’ve trained myself to fall asleep to audiobooks. When I have someone over or sleep at someone else’s place, I wear headphones.”
“At best, she’s incredibly selfish. At worst. she is genuinely abusive.” – Marialnconnu
“NTA. Background noise/white noise is optional. She can control what she listens, how loud, and how she listens to it.”
“It’s not a medical thing, she doesn’t HAVE to have it on full blast on speaker. It’s not like snoring, where it’s done unconsciously.”
“She is being inconsiderate of your SHARED space. Claim your shared space.” – Electronic_Sense_122
“NTA. She can’t hijack the bedroom. Like you said, she could wear headphones. She needs to be a better partner and compromise on this.” – Away-Understanding34
“I find it interesting that her idea of compromise is 100% her way or nothing.”
“There is no couch to sleep on? Turn off the breaker to the bedroom so she can’t play her noises.”
“Seriously, though, something is wrong if she is not compromising.” – New-Distribution-981
“If it’s so ‘trivial’ and not a reason for you to ‘abandon the bed,’ then why doesn’t she turn it off?”
“Incessantly playing the same thing over and over was (and probably is, in some places) used as a form of torture.”
“NTA. A successful marriage takes two people willing to compromise, not one selfish a**hole walking all over, torturing and manipulating the other until they crack.” – PrideofCapetown
“The f**k?! NTA.”
“Now, I listen to fan and airplane propeller noises to go to sleep, so I understand needing noise. But when I was in college, I used headphones to NOT disturb my roommates.”
“Actually, I prefer wearing my headphones now (they were uncomfortable at first) because the noises engulf me, and I fall asleep relatively instantaneously.”
“Has she always been this way? Stubborn? Inconsiderate? Batsh*t? Did you piss her off recently? Do you snore loudly and perhaps she thinks she’s ‘getting back’ at you?”
“Not that it makes it right, but it almost sounds like she f**king with you for God knows for what reason. I don’t know how long I could stay in a marriage like this.” – NoodleEmpress
“Man, your wife is full of nonsense. I play sea sounds (waves, but I might try whale sounds now that you mention it) at night to help me sleep, and however soft you think is an acceptable volume for sleeping to, you’re wrong, and it needs to be softer.”
“In my experience, once you’ve settled in to go to sleep, sound becomes totally magnified. If you can barely hear it when you’re moving about with the lights on, it’s gonna become consuming when you’re still with your eyes closed and the lights out.”
“NTA, and your wife needs to learn how to compromise.” – JaggedRain
“I don’t understand how people find themselves in one-sided partnerships where someone can just arbitrarily fill shared space with whatever crap only benefits them.”
“Like, I would not have asked to turn it down, I would have made clear that this is my bed, too, and it’s f**king unacceptable to unilaterally decide this is the sound of sleepy-time. And my partner would never, ever try to pull this s**t. Nor, obviously, would I.”
“So, like, why are you married to someone that doesn’t respect you or care at all for your comfort and needs?”
“Like, the whale song is a symptom. It’s stupid, but it’s a symptom.”
“What actually matters here is that your comfort and wants… don’t. That’s the issue. You don’t matter in your own marriage.”
“How the f**k is that acceptable? What are you going to do about it?”
“NTA, but your wife sure is, and it’s about d**n time you stopped rolling over to take it. Sleeping in your car because you have no say whatsoever in the sounds of your bedroom. What the f**k kind of marriage is that? Get your shit together, dude.” – Longwinded-Ogre
“That’s ultimatum time.”
“Tell her, ‘Either the music goes, or I reconsider if I want to stay married to someone who is literally torturing me by insisting I stay in a room I can’t sleep in. I CAN’T SLEEP HERE WHEN YOU PLAY WHALE NOISES. That should concern you. The fact that it doesn’t concerns ME. It tells me you don’t give a s**t about my comfort or well-being, as long as you can pretend you’re Dory.'”
“‘So, we’re at a stalemate. Either you stop playing that godd**n sound, ANY sounds at night while I’m trying to sleep, or I reconsider if this marriage is tenable. I shouldn’t have to say, ‘If you loved me, you wouldn’t deprive me of sleep,’ yet here we are.'”
“NTA.” – perimentalpause
While the subReddit could understand that some people need white noise or other sounds to help them sleep, they found it alarming how loud and often the OP’s wife played the whale sounds.
If it was really important to her for the OP to not “abandon their bed” and come back into the house, then she needed to reach a compromise with her husband, and compromise wasn’t, “My way or the Mariana Trench.”