Wife mortified when husband mocks her weight with female fitness friend. AITA?
"AITA- My husband embarrassed me in front of our friends"
BunnyThrowawayACCOU
My husband and I are both 28 years old and we were hanging out with our friends over the weekend. Theres this girl Sara(F21) that was at the hang out and she’s a fitness girlie. Sara was talking about her workout routine and my husband started talking with her since he lifts and they were talking about how much they lift.
She also mentions she’s getting certified to be a personal trainer and then my husband said “my wife will be your first success story” he also said “yeah she needs to lose weight but she’s been unmotivated and maybe if she has you training her then she will want to have a killer body too”
I swear he said this in front of everyone. He had some drinks too and some of our friends around us were laughing, including myself to avoid this awkward and embarrassing moment.
Sara starts going on about how she use to be fat and she turned her life around after losing weight and how she majored in nutrition. My husband starts talking about my unhealthy eating habits and how I eat all the snacks in the house and I finished all the cake from my birthday in 2 days when my husband only had one slice of the cake.
She was like “ooo I use to be like that. I get it I use to be 160 pounds” and my husband said “that’s about how much my wife weighs, baby how much you weigh like 165-170 now?”
I was fuming at this point. My friend got me out of there and told me that our other friend needed help with her something inside the house. I started crying in my friends room.
My husband didn’t even know he did anything wrong. He thought he was just having conversation and trying to help because I’ve been talking about starting my weight loss journey.
I DON’T NEED HER HELP AND I DON’T WANT HER HELP. He goes “wow someone’s jealous aww,” he tried saying it in a cutesy way as if this is funny like read the room. He thinks I’m overreacting.
ETA: people kept messaging me asking what my height is. I’ll just add it on here. Sara and me are about the same height she’s probably one inch taller than me but I’m 5’2.
Here were the top rated comments from readers in response to the OP's post:
JanetInSpain
He knew EXACTLY what he was doing. Claiming innocence is total bullshit. Then he gaslights you -- claiming you're jealous. He's a 100% ahole. You are not over-reacting.
What he did was rude, cruel, condescending, bullying, inappropriate, and hateful. He owes you a sincere apology. If he refuses or worse, digs in deeper, is this who you want to spend the rest of your life with? You are NTA.
Mental-Woodpecker300
Just want to add for op that doing this in front of an audience can usually be a way to avoid an immediate push back. We're more likely to just smile and nod to avoid more embarrassment when there's an audience.
Then mocking you when you're upset is him undermining your feelings to make you feel small so you're more likely to roll over and take the abuse. Because that's what this is.
Routine-Focus-9429
NTA, if your husband wants to talk about his own weight and fitness goals he can, but it is very rude to volunteer someone else and talk about their weight and eating habits. It also seemed a little icky like he was trying to hit on the fitness girl, telling her she has a killer body.
He was intentionally putting you down in front of other people. Maybe he was hoping that shaming would motivate you, but that is not really a good strategy or a nice way for a partner show support to help you reach your fitness goals. I don’t blame you for being upset.
I am glad you have good friends who have a clue and were able to extricate you from the conversation. You are NTA, but your husband is. I hope he stops being dismissive and actually listens and finds better ways to communicate and support you.
prologuetoapunch
I would add that the other woman is also an asshole. If she really wants to be a fitness instructor and / or a nutritionist, she needs to learn to shut this kind of talk down, too. If a client wants to have personal conversation, that's good, but talking about other people this way in public is not good practice.
geekylace
Should have responded with:
The weight I really need to lose is [insert husband’s weight] because my soon to be ex husband doesn’t know when to stay in his godamn lane and not say inappropriate things out in public. NTA.
K_A_irony
NTA. Your husband is. The blatant flirting and detailing what you eat and what you do and don't do was positively gross. I would demand marriage counseling ASAP.
You two need to work on your communication. If your weight is a deal breaker for your husband, he needs to own that instead of aggressively flirting and putting you down in front of people.
You don't mention kids, you need to figure out if your husband genuinely loves and cares about you AS IS and from there determine if this relationship if good for you. Please do NOT have kids with this man until your marriage is way healthier.
Dry_Sandwich_860
JaneInSpain, who commented earlier, is absolutely right. He knew EXACTLY what he was doing. Do not let him distract and deflect by pretending not to know he did anything wrong. There is not a single person who doesn't know that this is a sensitive topic.
If your weight were not an issue for him, he wouldn't have talked about it. His behavior was incredibly unkind, even cruel. He obviously wanted to humiliate you. I would take this very seriously.
As for Sara, give her a second chance. She was in an unbelievably awkward situation, where a husband was flirting with her by dumping on his wife in public. By talking about her own weight loss, she was probably trying to make your husband realize that weight is not a big deal and that everyone struggles at some point. Nothing she could have said in that situation would have come across well.
I realize that a short post here doesn't describe most relationships accurately. There may be things about your husband that are great. Or maybe you need to stay with him for financial reasons.
So I won't tell you what to do. But I would feel very concerned about the relationship if I were you. Do not let your husband minimize and dismiss what he did. I'd be insisting on going to counseling.