Reddit’s “Am I the A**hole” forum is often filled with clueless spouses. But we may have found the most clueless of them all: This dad-to-be who took his 6-months-pregnant wife on a strenuous hike because he was worried she was becoming a “couch potato,” then got upset with her when she couldn’t keep pace with him and his friends and threw up. Yes, really.
“Over the weekend, my wife and I went on a hiking trip with some of my friends. We’ve always been active people, but it kind of seems like my wife, who’s six months pregnant, has sort of turned into a couch potato in recent weeks. It’s caused her to gain a bit of weight and become moody, so I figured some exercise would be good for her and for me,” he wrote.
“Well, I thought I picked a pretty easy hike. It’s a trail that’s close to our house and not that long (about 3 miles out and back), but it can be a bit steep in places. She’s done it before, so it couldn’t have been too much of a surprise. Well, we were about 1/3 of the way done when my wife started huffing and puffing. My friends slowed down to accommodate her, so I decided to slow down too. After half a mile of the huffing and puffing, my wife looked pretty bad. She got really pale and was hunched over on one side of the trail. I was sort of shocked to see her in this state. She had let herself go recently, but I didn’t think she would lose her fitness this quickly.”
He continued, “However, a few minutes later, she actually started to throw up, and it was at this point that we all decided to head back. I’m fully aware that she’s going to deliver a baby in 3 months, but I can’t help but think that she wouldn’t have embarrassed me in front of my friends if she had kept up her exercise routine. We both ate the same food at breakfast, and I never got sick, so that couldn’t be it either. We got back to the parking lot, and I apologized for my wife’s behavior to my friends. I thought I was out of earshot, but apparently my wife heard the whole thing.”
Thankfully, his wife let him have it.
“When I got back to the car, she went nuts,” he wrote. “She told me that I was an ‘idiot’ for thinking she could keep up at our normal pace and that I was a ‘grade A a**hole’ for insinuating that my wife had thrown up on purpose. I listened to her rant at me before politely asking if she thought she would have felt so sick if she hadn’t been a couch potato recently, but she refused to engage with me at all. I wanted it to dawn on her that she was at least partially to blame for this, but she refused to take any responsibility. This happened on Saturday, and even today has been really tense. It’s as if she’s holding a grudge against me, and I don’t know how to get her to stop.”
Yikes. On. Bikes.
I mean, where do we even start? I’m personally still speechless at this man’s cluelessness and audacity, so I’m just going to let the commenters take this.
“YOUR WIFE DIDN’T LET HERSELF GO – SHE IS GROWING ANOTHER HUMAN BEING IN HER BODY AND IT’S TIRING! SHE NEEDS TO RELAX WHEN SHE FEELS TIRED NOT NEED TO GO OUT AND DO HIKES BECAUSE YOU THINK SHE NEEDS IT… ALSO SHE IS GOING TO GAIN WEIGHT – IT’S NOT FROM BEING A “COUCH POTATO” IT’S PERFECTLY HEALTHY, YOU WOULD WANT TO BE CONCERNED IF SHE WASN’T GAINING WEIGHT!!” the top-rated comment reads. “You seriously owe your wife a huge apology, she didn’t embarrass you, you embarrassed yourself with your own behavior!!! Also – She’s really making me sad with this horrible treatment – Do you have any remorse for how you treated her???”
Another top comment reads, “The reason OP is the AH is because of the complete and utter disdain for his life partner who is carrying his child. Growing a child inside one’s body is exhausting by itself. ‘Apologizing’ for her ‘behavior’ is the bridge too far. Even if the wife didn’t overhear, it’s not a fault to not be able to do the same physical tasks that were done before pregnancy. The remarks to the friends are definitely ‘grade A AH’ talk. All that to say, you’re a giant AH OP. Have some empathy for the person who’s about to bring your progeny into the world. Hopefully she raises them to be more grateful and empathetic than you.”
Usually there’s some debate in the comments of these posts, but this one has actually done the impossible and united the internet. No one disagrees that this guy is wrong. He is the a**hole and everyone knows it but him.
Now here’s hoping his wife loses some dead weight — by cutting her jerk of a husband out of her life.
