Woman yelled at by husband for 'taking away' baby shower task; 'I got furious.' AITA?
When this woman is annoyed with her husband at her baby shower, she asks Reddit:
"AITA? Tried to finish baby shower invite envelopes without husband?"
Baby shower for first baby is being thrown by MIL and (somewhat) my mother in Dec. Knowing that my mom isn't very crafty or helpful, I've offered to do a few tasks so it's not all on my MIL and SIL.
Party will be co-ed, so the men are invited as well. My husband said he'd help and i asked him to compile all the addresses we'd need. He did so and added them to the word file needed to print the addresses on the envelopes.
I created the invites digitally and got them printed. We wanted them to be mailed early in the first week in October (this week). I mentioned printing the envelopes over last weekend but we got too busy to do them.
I told my husband I wanted to download a font that matches the invites for the envelopes and he said if I got the names he'd download them. I texted him the names at 10am on Tues.
He gets home from work at 2-ish. When I got home at 6pm, he was napping on the couch. I figured he was tired and I went upstairs to the computer to see if he did the envelopes.
He didn't. I wasn't mad or anything as he was obviously tired, but I was anxious to get them out so I started checking the spelling and downloading the font.
He came upstairs a few minutes later, furious, telling me to get off the computer because he was going to do them. I let him know I already started editing and it'll take me a minute to finish.
He started yelling, saying "that was my task and you're taking it away from me!". He gets thrown for a loop sometimes with changes in plans, but he usually does not start out yelling like this.
I told him I wasn't mad and I wasn't taking it from him, I just saw he was tired and wanted to get them done really quickly. He began saying he can't believe I'd be so insulting to him as to take away his task.
I told him I'm not taking it away and there are many tasks he can also help with, but that he was getting irrationally mad about this and he should go calm down. I asked if there was something else wrong or if he had a bad day because he's not normally this agitated.
(Side note - he suffers from bipolar disorder but is well medicated and has hardly ever had an outburst like this). He walked away and came back telling me to get off his computer and saying he hoped I was saving what I was doing because he was going to "cut the F-ing power to the house."
That's when I got furious, as my abusive older brother used to do that to me as a little kid when my parents weren't home to scare/control me. I told him if he cut the power, he'd be packing himself a f-ING bag in the dark then because I was not going to give in to this abusive tantrum.
Honestly, if he had said calmly "I'd really like to finish the project." I would have gotten up. But the way he confronted me about it struck me as something I can't give in to because i didnt want him thinking it was an ok way to communicate to me. I know that sounds patronizing, so AITA?
Let's see what readers thought.
shadowfoxe writes:
ESH- words, instead of just taking over the task (which you did by doing something you'd ask him to) you needed to talk to him beforehand. And him making threats like that isnt cool at all.
Sadly I've seen lots of posts about guys going off like this when their spouse is pregnant, I guess its because they can't control the situation and feel rather apart from the whole thing. Please just sit down with him and talk it over once you both have cool heads.
okcontext writes:
NTA. I may be pessimistic but my mind automatically went to "Is this really about "taking his task", or is he hiding something on the computer?" Because if this is not normal behavior, this is a really strange thing to get this mad about, yell about, and to threaten to cut the power to the house about. Not trying to put things in your head OP but wth?
ahthroaway writes:
NTA: But this is most likely caused by his BPD and this just the first time you saw this side of his disorder.