Superfit Husband Buys Wife A Gym Membership For Her Birthday
‘I’m With Fatty’ t-shirt? Dump. Him. The end.
Look no further, because we’ve found him. The Worst Husband Ever™ has made an appearance on a subreddit entitled “Am I The Asshole,” where a wife wonders if she’s being unreasonable over feeling hurt and humiliated over her husband’s latest gift — a gym membership.
Now, maybe you’re thinking “Well, it’s not the best gift, but it can’t be that bad.” Which means you simply must read the entire post, which has gone viral on Reddit. Because this guy isn’t just thoughtless. He sounds like an abusive jerk.
“So my spouse has been making jokes about my body ever since we got married 3 years ago.” Already, it’s clear who the real asshole is in this relationship, and it sure isn’t the wife. “Anyway, my spouse got into triathlons around the time we were married. Since then, he has been making little suggestions about my body and doing things to suggest I diet.”
The examples she lists of his “little suggestions” sound a whole lot like verbal and mental abuse:
“You’ll look so much better with some definition in your abs”
“Aren’t you worried about love handles?”
“Wearing an “I’m with fatty —->” t-shirt while on vacation with his wife
“Jesus you have no triceps! You should volunteer to be a research subject at the medical school!”
He’ll make his wife try a vegan diet for a month
One weekend when she was away on a work trip he cleaned out all the snacks in the pantry so they could try to live “snack-free” for a month
And that’s not all! On top of berating his loving wife for three years about her lack of triceps and publicly humiliating her while on vacation, he recently poured salt in all those wounds by giving her the gift of a gym membership for her birthday.
“When I saw the gift I teared up a little but not because I was happy,” she writes. “I told him I just felt like he doesn’t think my body is attractive enough for him. He got offended that I would take his well-meaning gift as a criticism and is still mad at me. Now I feel really terrible and want to find a way to make it up to him. Did I really act assholish by crying and saying those things?”
Allow me to answer that for you:
The lovely people of Reddit chimed right in with similar sentiments, because this woman needs to know her only problem is the guy she’s married to.
His behavior (as outlined by his wife seeking advice in this Reddit post) is manipulative, controlling, and abusive. His reaction to her reaction regarding the gym membership is a classic case of gaslighting. Aggressors and abusers often use this tactic as a form of psychological manipulation to get the reactions and the behavior they want from the person they’re abusing. Acting offended that your wife isn’t thrilled with a gym membership gift after years of criticizing her body is deliberately manipulative and destructive.
Leaving an unhealthy relationship and ending a marriage is, of course, no small feat. But when she’s ready to do it someday, here’s a suggestion on what to do with her “I’m With Fatty” husband:
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