GF with diarrhea lights match to cover smell; BF's family 'panics' and investigates.

Anyone with bowel issues knows the panic and embarrassment of a sticky situation. And in those situations, attention is the last thing you want...

When a woman fell ill and unwittingly committed a dangerous faux pas (according to her boyfriend's family) that woke the entire house, she came to Reddit to ask:

'AITA (Am I the A-hole) for lighting a match at night and 'scaring' my boyfriend’s dad so badly he woke up the whole house?'

u/AmITheeAss writes:

My boyfriend and I are staying at his parents’ house. It’s been going really well, but his dad is very particular. He has moments every day where he corrects or instructs the other people in the house on how he wants us to behave. I don’t really have a problem with it, but he has a few rules that do make me a little uncomfortable.

I don’t need to get into why, but I always get diarrhea here. I’ve been visiting them a few times a year for almost a decade and it just is what it is. My boyfriend and I used to stay in a room downstairs with a bathroom and it wasn’t a problem, but his brother moved back home and now we don’t have our own bathroom.

I don’t want to advertise the fact that I have diarrhea to everyone in the house and I’m not allowed to use the bathroom fan at night, so I usually use Poo-Pourri or Just a Drop. When we got home the last time, my boyfriend got a text from his dad asking him to ask me to stop using “strong essential oils” as it was making him feel sick.

I was so embarrassed and I honestly have been kind of dreading coming here again. I was talking to my mom about this and she suggested that I bring some paper matches because that’s what she used to do. I got some paper matches and they actually work pretty well.

Tonight I woke up from my sleep because I had diarrhea. I lit a match when I was done, ran it under water and folded it up into some aluminum before throwing it in the garbage.

I fell back asleep and was woken up a while later by a big commotion. My boyfriend’s dad smelled burning and thought the house was on fire so he woke everyone up in a panic and searched the house to see what was burning.

I didn’t immediately equate a match with a house fire and I didn’t smell anything when I woke up so I didn’t bring up that I had lit a match. It wasn’t even clicking for me that the match was what he smelled until my boyfriend asked me if I smelled anything when I got up earlier to use the bathroom.

Long story short, I just got chewed out by his dad for “lighting matches at night or lighting matches in general as a guest in their home” and even his mom was upset because I could have “started a fire” and “nobody would know”.

I apologized and everyone went back to bed but then my boyfriend lectured me for like 15 mins about “embarrassing him” and “playing dumb” about not knowing what his dad smelled and not using “common sense” and then he told me to “go to sleep” and “try not to wake everyone up again”.

I’m honestly so pissed. My boyfriend is sleeping soundly and I’m just laying here getting madder and madder. I want to wake him up so we can leave because I feel so uncomfortable. I really don’t want to face everyone in the morning.

I don’t feel like I did anything wrong, but I don’t know if I’m thinking rationally because I’m tired and I can’t fall back asleep. What do you think, am I the a-hole?

Used-Rooster-883 suggests:

Next time Girl, just let everyone smell your sh*t. Then bask in it. They are clueless that u are trying to help them but f*ck it right lol I would react with nonchalance if I heard them ask what that awful smell was. Then I’d call my mom and so she could laugh with me

OP replies:

Thank you for cheering me up with your funny comment. I wish I was that bold!

MediumSympathy explains:

I don't think lighting a match at night is inherently dangerous, but they do smell of burning when they are put out and if I woke up and smelled burning in my house unexpectedly when I thought everyone was asleep then I would freak out too. If this was a one off incident without the rest of the context then I would have said NAH (No a-holes here).

But TinyGibbons disagrees:

The smell of a match smells entirely different than a fire. There is no excuse for this AH to think his house was on fire.

To which they rebut:

Agree to disagree, I guess. If I smell smoke when everyone is asleep I'm going to get up and look for something burning, not jump to thinking that a guest must have got up to light matches in the bathroom in the middle of the night.

imothro says:

I think you get diarrhea at these people's home because it's an incredibly stressful environment where you are walking on eggshells the entire time to tiptoe around his extremely volatile and aggressive father. I mean Jesus Christ, have these people never owned a candle? NTA (Not the a-hole).

OP responds:

The stress probably doesn’t help, but I get sick there because of the food. They do things like leave meat out on the counter all day to thaw and they don’t put all the leftovers in the fridge and if they do it’s not done quickly enough and there’s just a lot of cross contamination and stuff with raw meat.

None of them get sick I guess because they are used to it, so it’s not a priority for them to change the way they do things. My boyfriend has tried suggesting different food safety things to them, but they aren’t interested.

I always try to be polite when I’m a guest in someone’s home and it’s important to me to make my boyfriend happy, but I’m just so over this trip and I want to go home. Sorry for ranting to you and thanks for your comment.

imothro comments:

I think you should go home. And I'm not sure you should go back. Next time you guys visit them, you should insist on staying in a hotel and not eat meals at their home. It is entirely unreasonable for your bf to expect you to poison yourself and make yourself sick to accommodate his parents.

rbollige adds:

I thought it was going to be water sanitation, which would be one thing because it’s (possibly) unavoidable, but when it’s purely the family’s neglect and it’s so consistent it happens every time, yeah, OP is practically being assaulted every visit and then getting belittled over it. I definitely would recommend reducing visits.

But then Alqpzm1029 gets to the heart of the issue:

INFO: were you raised in an abusive household?

And OP answers honestly:

This is the second comment I’ve seen like this and now I’m kind of concerned that maybe I was. My dad was kind of hard on everyone but not for stuff like - Wow, actually I was going to type in “bodily functions”, but as I was typing it I was reminded of all the road trips we took were we weren’t allowed to stop if we had to pee until he had to pee.

Am I really giving “abused person” vibes or something? I’m questioning my whole life rn.

Alqpzm1029 responds:

I feel like you may need a blunt take, so yes, you are. I was raised very similarly. An extremely hard and strict father who set specific rules and we followed them to a T. My husband is a kind, gentle, soft-spoken man, and yet I STILL jump and cower when he gets upset about something (which very rarely happens.)

You're giving doormat vibes to someone who doesn't know that life. To me, you're giving 'I need to keep the peace and follow the rules at my own emotional expense and forgoing my own well-being' vibes.

I would really really suggest taking a step back and evaluating your current situation. If you can afford therapy or if you are mentally ready, do it! If not, look up videos on YouTube, read books, try to figure out why you are this way and how to overcome it. I have a feeling you won't be staying in this current relationship but only YOU can make the right call. Put yourself first for once.

Looks like there may be more to this story...

It seems like this is an opportunity for OP to examine not only her relationship with this family, but herself. Good luck out there, everyone. And refridgerate your meat!