Man Is Upset About His Wife's 'Trashy' College Years, But Many Feel She Shouldn't Have To Apologize For Her Past
We all get a little wild in college, but do we really need to answer for it years later — and would we ever expect a man to do so?
Aleksandr Popov via Unsplash / fizkes via Shutterstock Many people had the opportunity to experience some wild moments in college, and they often involve things we probably wouldn't do in our more mature years — that's part of what makes them fun memories, right?
A man on Reddit, however, is not seeing the humor in the wilder moments of his wife's school days, and it's causing quite a bit of drama between them. It's also sparked a conversation about how much responsibility we bear for our pasts — and the double standards often applied to women that men never face.
The man wants an apology for his wife's 'trashy' college years after she told their friends a story about her dating life in her 20s.
Right off the bat, you can probably sense the direction this is going in — and it certainly doesn't seem like something that would happen if the roles were reversed, right?
The conflict arose after the man's wife and her friends were laughing about an old story about a college party back in the day. "Has your wife ever told you about how she made two guys have a UFC match?” his wife's friend Sarah asked — to which his wife responded, "OMG shut up!" which is how you know it's a good story.
Photo: @ask_aubry / Twitter
The story centered on his wife's sex life during college, which deeply offended him.
It all started with two guys at a college party "getting competitive and aggressive towards each other" because they both wanted to take the man's wife home. "'So I told them if they fought each other one-on-one I would go home with the winner,'" his wife said.
But it didn't stop there. "'Don't forget to tell him how you made them fight in their underwear!'" one of his wife's friends said. "I was shocked," the man wrote. He then asked his wife how the fight turned out, to which she responded, "'you mean did I sleep with the winner? Yes to be honest.'"
This is certainly not out of character for wild, randy college kids, nor is it anywhere near the wildest college story ever told. Nor, importantly, does it even approach the kind of tales men often tell about their glory days and sexual prowess while in college.
But suffice it to say, this rather judgmental guy didn't see it that way.
He's so upset about his wife's 'trashy' college years he's now insisting she apologizes to him for it.
He writes that later in the night, he told his wife "how disappointed I am." He was upset because it was a "gross story" he felt "she shouldn’t be laughing about...or telling anybody."
Photo: @ask_aubry / Twitter
His wife reminded him that he asked to hear the tale, but he countered that "I thought it would be a normal crazy college story. Not…whatever the fu-k this was." Things got so heated that they ended up sleeping apart that night because she refused to apologize.
"This story was trashy," he writes. "I thought I deserved an apology for having to hear it. They shouldn’t be joking about it." This wild overreaction seems likely rooted in several problems, sexist double standards and potentially outright misogyny — not to mention a total lack of a sense of humor — chief among them.
Insisting someone apologize for their past is not just petty and childish — experts say it could also be an indicator of narcissistic abuse.
Other people on Reddit definitely saw right through the man's complaints. Aside from making a mountain out of a molehill over things that happened before he and his wife had even met, they also sensed that this guy has some real hang-ups about his woman's sexuality that seem retroactive, to say the least.
Photo: Reddit
But, in a YouTube video, psychologist Dr. Ramani Durvasula explains that in some cases, an obsession with a partner's past can also be a red flag for narcissistic tendencies. And the National Domestic Violence Hotline warns that a fixation on a partner's sexual past specifically is also a major warning sign.
Of course, not every man who's this sensitive about his wife's past is necessarily an abuser, but there's no denying that at minimum there's a double standard at play here — if the roles were reversed, a story about a man's collegiate sexual exploits would likely be laughed off as the stuff of "boys will boys" legend.
And expecting someone to atone for who they were at 20 is wildly unfair in any case. It's probably best to just lighten up and let the past be the past. You can't change it anyway.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.