Wife Furious With Her Husband After He Tells An Old Female Friend From School He's 'A Little Married'
He said he didn't mean anything by it. But what was she supposed to think?
simonapilollatnf / Canva Pro We all put our foot in our mouth or make an off-handed joke that doesn't land now and then. But some things you just don't joke about, right? And if you do, it quickly starts to seem a bit suspicious.
That's the sort of situation a woman on Reddit has found herself in with her husband, whose joke about his marital status is keeping her up at night and leaving her wondering what it all means.
She's furious that her husband joked about his marital status with a female friend.
The conflict began when the wife saw the comment on her husband's phone. "My husband fell asleep with his messenger open," the woman wrote in her post, "which is how I saw that he had a new message at 2 a.m."
It's easy to misconstrue a simple attempt at humor as something nefarious, of course. Complicating it further is the awkward phrasing of her husband's joke. But the exchange had pretty much everyone — not just the wife — seeing red flags.
He joked he was 'a little married,' and his wife felt it was 'disrespectful and hurtful.'
It's hard to really conceive of what a joke about being "a little married" could possibly mean, other than the worst possible interpretation, especially given the circumstances.
"It was an old schoolmate (female). She said she heard he had gotten married, and congratulated him," the wife explained — and of course, most of us would instantly become suspicious this was actually an old flame checking in.
His response did little to quell that worry: "He replied by saying, 'yea, I really got a little married.'" That's an awkward, kind of strange way to phrase the joke — like, respectfully, sir, what does that even mean?
But having joked about his marital status, even ham-fistedly, doesn't exactly inspire confidence — it gives the impression that marital status isn't exactly a dealbreaker for him. For her part, the wife wrote, "It hurt my feelings, and I felt disrespected."
And while her husband insisted it was just a silly joke, the wife said, "I find that hard to believe, because he could have easily said yes, and thank you, but he said that instead."
Some online thought she was paranoid — and then she revealed she had reason to be.
The more the wife discussed it with her fellow Redditors, the more suspicious she seemed to become. "I know that I personally wouldn't message a married man at 2 a.m.," she wrote to a commenter who was convinced something unseemly was afoot. "Not even just to congratulate him."
Several felt she was making a mountain out of a molehill over a simple joke and chided her that she shouldn't have been snooping in his affairs in the first place. But this didn't sit right with her — she responded that she "didn't see the humor" in the remark, for starters.
But then she revealed something even more telling: this isn't exactly the first time something like this has happened. "I caught him in the act of looking at dating sites and some other things," she told one commenter, who was adamant that she was being way too suspicious.
"I would have never been suspicious at all if I didn't already know things," she said to another. "I have proof of things that made me feel this way."
Many urged her to leave him, but in the end, she decided to accept his explanation and forgive.
For all the justifiable suspicion she said she had, she certainly changed course quickly. "We always have had an honest relationship," she told another commenter, which certainly seems counter to other things she said about their marriage.
"We talked about it, and he is adamant it wasn't anything," she went on to explain. "I wouldn't divorce him over something like that though, like some suggest. I have come to a peaceful place in my heart about this. I forgive him. But mainly for me."
She added that she has chosen to accept his apology and simply move on, resigning herself to the idea that "you can't love someone into loving you" properly. That's certainly one way to think about it, but many others were wholly unconvinced.
"I hope with some self-reflection and maybe professional help we can stop falling in love with men like this," one TikToker wrote in response to the story.
Yes, here's hoping. Because while every relationship is different and everyone has different standards, this story sure sounds an awful lot like someone rationalizing away their gut instincts.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice, and human interest topics.