There are a lot of people in this world who get taken for granted, but stay-at-home moms have to be close to the top of the list.
Based on the marital arguments that end up leaking onto the internet, it seems common for the work that these parents do to be reduced to either an afterthought or total servitude .
In such cases, thoughtless spouses seem to expect these people to take care of just about every aspect of their own lives and use the fact that they’re the breadwinner as leverage to make this demand.
But while the unfortunate truth is that there is no shortage of examples for this behavior, one woman’s story of how her husband is manipulating a childfree wedding to his own ends is one of the most galling.
For the mom we’re going to hear about, going out is rarely an option.
As she explained in a Reddit post , that’s because her husband forbids the presence of babysitters due to an unspecified incident that left his younger cousin disabled when they were younger.
This means that she can’t go anywhere that doesn’t allow kids since she always has to keep their three children with her. As a result, she hasn’t attended any such event in four years.
At first, it seemed like she finally would have her chance when her brother sent the couple invitations to his four-day wedding celebration.
But since this brother has been her husband’s friend since college, the husband didn’t feel they could both go once he learned the brother was having a childfree wedding.
When the mom suggested having a trusted friend watch the kids, he immediately dismissed this idea and said she should stay home as she does during all of his business trips.
In her words, “He said it wasn’t his fault my brother wants a child free wedding and I should do this for the kids and sacrifice for their sake.”
And when she said that he should stay home himself if this is how he feels, he resented the idea that she was asking him to skip his best friend’s wedding.
And when she argued that she had a right to be there too and that all of her friends had babysitters, he dismissed these arguments without discussing them and accused her of choosing to go to a party instead of keeping their kids safe.
As she put it, “When I kept arguing he called me selfish and said he won’t let me ruin his relationship with his friend.”
He also said that her brother would understand the situation, which apparently made her wonder if she was truly being as selfish as he claimed.
But to the Reddit community she reached out to, the fact that she even had this doubt in her mind said a lot about their relationship.
As one user said , “This is insane. It’s YOUR brother and somehow your husband things HE is the one who should get to go? When he’s the whole reason you can’t both go because of his unreasonable paranoia about hiring a babysitter?”
Others were very alarmed by how controlling the husband sounded and wondered if his supposed past with babysitters was anything more than an isolation tactic.
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As another person put it , “You husband uses this babysitting issues to control you and trap you in your home. Please seek help.”
h/t: Reddit | 3465throw_away
