One man’s fervent complaints about his girlfriend’s “zest for life” has been causing an uproar across the internet, and for justifiable reasons!
Times are hard for people in relationships.
Relationships can be difficult at the best of times, and the current situation has made things even more difficult.
However, relationships aren’t meant to be easy. The point of being in a relationship is you work with someone to make your life together work as one.
One man recently took to Reddit to try and ask for advice about his current relationship.
The man took to Reddit using an account called “ttthrowawayyy9999” to pose a question to the Am I An Asshole subreddit.
And, it quickly became apparent why he used an anonymous throwaway account, as he did not come off well from his post!
The man wanted to know if he was an “asshole” for being annoyed by his “girlfriend’s zest for life”.
The title of the post read, “AITA for being annoyed by my girlfriend’s zest for life?” and the post opened by giving some background.
He explained that he is 33, and his girlfriend is 29, writing, “My girlfriend is a very lively and energetic person. But sometimes her behaviour is really annoying for me”.
Apprently, her “joy for little meaningless things”, is “tiring” to him.
The guy even went so far to say that his girlfriend can find joy in things “up [to] 5 times a day”! How ever does he cope?
He even gave examples of how her enthusiastic, generally nice demeanour is incredibly, yes incredibly, tiresome! Writing:
“Yesterday we went on a hike and she was constantly admiring the nature. ‘The grass has reached an impressive height.’ ‘These ducks have babies! Look! Three!’ ‘Nature is healing my soul. Look at this panorama. Breathtaking.’
“She was obviously having the time of her life. […] But I just wanted to exercise and get the hike done as quick as possible,” he wrote.
The boyfriend even blamed her family for this positive attitude!
The boyfriend went on to write:
“I know exactly where her behavior comes from. Her family does the same. ‘Look, James. The tit found a nest in our tree.’ ‘Mary, look how beautiful your cake glazing turned out to be. Delicious!’.”
I really do pity this poor man, it must be so tiresome having to be surrounded by nice people all of the time, what a bummer!
When he confronted his girlfriend about this, things turned understandably sour…
“I am so tired of looking. I don’t want to give her that attention and the things she is pointing out dont make me happy. They mean nothing to me,” he wrote.
“So I guess I was being rude by telling her ‘Please. Please let me walk in peace and stop asking me to admire all this stuff. I don’t want to!’ She didn’t take it well and we ended up being quiet for the rest of the hike. I didn’t want to silence her. I am sorry and apologized but she was angry and avoiding me in our apartment. She said ‘So what else am I supposed to talk about?’. I think she got me wrong,” he continued.
Nope, I don’t think she did get you wrong, I think she got you exactly right!
The boyfriend then asked the forum if they thought that he was being an asshole.
The fact that he is asking from an anonymous account suggests that he knew that the majority of people would not be on his side.
RELATED STORIES
And boy, were his niggling suspicions right! As the post gained more and more traction across the internet, more and more angry responses came flooding in!
Almost everyone did in fact consider the boyfriend to be an asshole.
A lot of the responses were far from pleasant in regards to the man asking the question. However, a lot of answers pointed out quite calmly that he is an asshole for sucking the joy out of his partner’s life, and even questioned why they were together:
“[You’re the asshole]. While as a fellow grump, I do see how this does not really interest you – this is who your girlfriend is. You’re literally sucking the joy out of her, and not respecting her as a person very much. Frankly, it sounds like you’re not a great match.” — aspartameheart
“I swear, I don’t get people sometimes. I keep seeing posts here that boil down to: ‘my partner was doing something that made them happy and was harmless, I sh*t on them from a great height, and now they have the audacity to be not as happy around me!’ Bro, let your girl be happy and enjoy nature! Besides, you got what you wanted. You bitched that she was being talkative and making you ‘look at things’, and now she’s not, because you ruined that for her. It doesn’t seem fair that you get to complain both when she is happy and when she is not.”
However, there were a few people that sided with the boyfriend.
Some of the top comments siding more with the boyfriend included the likes of:
“[You’re not the asshole] because I sympathize with both parties. As someone who generally has a sunny disposition I know that I get on people’s nerves sometimes and I try to tone it down to prevent that. However, I dated someone long term who was more melancholy and it did wear me down over time and I eventually became resentful.” — littlepicklemeow
“[You’re not an asshole.] You want to walk in peace, she likes looking at everything and wants you to have that pleasure too. You probably came off a little too gruff and she probably overreacted a little. No one is an asshole here, it was just a minor disagreement.” — w11f1ow3r
“[Not the asshole] for the feelings, [but the asshole] for the delivery. Most of these posts really do boil down to communication, just sit and talk to her respectfully, not when you’re at the end of your patience and will come across negatively”. — Roxo42
Where do you stand on this debate?
Do you think that the boyfriend is being unreasonable here? Or do you think he was right to act as he did?
I’m a very cynical and grumpy person, but I don’t think that I would ever let that bring someone I’m meant to care about down around me. But, let me know what you think in the comments!
