The story of one couple’s troubles regarding a family pet has been gathering considerable attention as people across the internet struggle to pick a side in the argument started by a family pet.
Relationships can mean a lot of compromises.
As your relationship with someone becomes more and more serious, compromise is an important part of any relationship.
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This can be especially true of married life, as one couple found out when trying to decide on a pet.
Owning a pet is a huge commitment.
Sure, getting a pet is a fantastic thing, after all, you get to spend your days loving and caring for something which loves you back unconditionally… unless you get a cat that is, then that’s a different dynamic.
However, the magnitude of commitment involved in owning a pet should never be underestimated.
One couple’s relationship recently came under strain as the result of such a decision.
One woman recently took to Reddit’s Am I The Asshole threads to ask, “AITA for choosing my dog over my wife?”
The story quickly garnered a lot of attention as she began by writing:
“Two years ago, my (24F) wife (33F) and I decided we might get a dog. This was my wife’s first pet that wasn’t a cat.”
The woman wrote that she fell in love with a dog at a local shelter.
“I met a super sweet pit at a local shelter and called my wife. She met him and agreed that he was sweet, and asked me if I could handle him and make sure he behaved. I’ve always trained my own dogs, and agreed that I could. We brought him home the next day,” she wrote.
“I was responsible for his feeding, walks, and training, as I was freelancing at the time. One day my wife came home to find him on the couch with me, and was very upset. He was not allowed on the furniture! She’d not said anything about it, and I’d never cared, but she did. So I agreed.”
However, she went on to say that her wife began to dislike the dog.
The exacerbated writer explained that her wife said that the dog, “smelled (I thought he was fine), he licked her (we trained that out), and he ran in the house (while playing). I tried explaining that she had to adjust her expectations, but she retorted that he was her first dog, so how could she have known?”
Their wife also began to resent how close the dog was with her partner, as she continued:
“Dog and I are very bonded. Wife complains that he’s ‘my dog.’ […] She was frustrated and said I had steamrolled my way into having a dog because I wanted one. I agreed that I had really wanted a dog and thought to myself maybe I had been dragging her along for the ride when we picked him. But she said yes? I pointed this out and she said I made her feel as though she couldn’t stay no.”
Ultimately, this leads to an ultimatum from their wife.
As their wife’s resentment towards the dog and, in turn, the author of the post grows, “every day with him is constant stress for her. It’s been stressful for me too, feeling all that resentment from her.”
Ultimately, a choice is laid out:
“She tells me to choose. Does the dog go or do I make her live with the stress? I love my wife and I can see how much this hurts her. I can’t deny that she’s in real discomfort. But I can’t agree with rehoming MY dog. I tell her the honest truth: if I am forced to re-home this dog (and it feels like force) then I will resent her too much for this relationship to work. He means that much and I’m not willing to compromise.
“I have chosen her discomfort over my own happiness. But she tells me, rather caustically, that she gets it.”
And, after 2 years, the author of the post questions whether what she did was right.
In the end, she turned to the internet to ask whether she had made the right decision, or if she was the asshole, as her and her wife had one final discussion on the matter:
“Tonight, 2 years later, it came to a head. She asked me if I feel remorse for the choice I’ve made. I tell her that seeing her unhappy makes me unhappy because I chose this path. She says that’s guilt, not remorse. (I can’t really tell the difference, to be honest with you.) I tell her I wouldn’t make the other choice, even now. And I’ve made my peace with that. She tells me that being calm in the face of her pain means I don’t care about her. I think I do. I want to believe that I do. But I still won’t give up my dog. [Am I the asshole?]”
The internet had some very strong arguments supporting both parties.
One person explained that the person writing the piece was in the wrong for not articulating properly what getting a dog would entail, and even accused them of strong-arming their spouse:
“I strongly suspect that you did strong-arm your wife into this dog. Based on the fact that you were visiting shelters without her, and the fact that she straight up said it.
“If you’re a dog person, this sounds like a great dog. She knew she wasn’t, you knew she wasn’t, and you knew well enough to set her expectations and you failed to do that. She doesn’t know what dogs are like. You tell her it will be well trained, but you never told her what that means- which is on you, the one with dog experience. The fact that you never discussed things like access to the furniture shows this.” — ReasonableTerms
There were some that were simply against dogs in general.
While there were some cat people invading the thread and simply complaining about dogs, there were also those who had more personal, and quite extreme, opinions about the situation:
“You knew she was very inexperienced with dogs… so you chose to get her a pit? That’s the worst possible choice you could have made if you wanted her to actually like the dog. They’re difficult work. She asked you beforehand if you could train this dog appropriately and you said yes. It definitely feels like this experience was for you, and only you. It wasn’t supposed to be just your dog, but that’s what you made it.
“Besides that, you are a horrible spouse. Your wife is miserable and you are okay with that? FOR TWO YEARS. It’s disgusting. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. Either rehome your dog, (which I don’t recommend at all) or rehome yourself. Get a divorce.” — theycallmecovid19
However, there were a lot of people on the side of the author.
A lot of people had to agree that, at the end of the day, the author’s wife did in fact agree to get the dog, and should have made her initial trepidation more apparent:
“I’m leaning towards NAH because you both agreed to get the dog, but you’re wife learned that she’s really not a dog lover. That’s not her fault, nor is it yours. I do find it weird that, in the two years with the dog, she hasn’t learned to coexist.
“I’m a cat person too, I don’t have enough energy to keep up with dogs, but I still like them enough live with them as family. It makes me feel like there is something else wrong with the relationship and she’s taking it out on the dog? You guys probably should’ve looked into marriage counseling two years ago, but better late than never if you’re both up to it.” — Eod_Enaj
In the end, it was decided that there was not enough information to reach a proper verdict.
Ultimately, the majority decided that more information on their situation and general context to the story was needed to make an accurate decision on who was in the wrong. The top comment on the thread read as such:
“INFO. This is not about the dog, and you two need to work this out in couples therapy. She’s playing power games with the past because she STILL does not feel that she is worth more to you than the dog. Perhaps that’s why the whole resentment started in the first place.”
In response to the suggestion of couples counseling, the author calmly and quite positively responded to say:
“I always figured this wasn’t about the dog, but it’s nice to have an outside perspective. Things were fine before the dog! I’ll talk to her about therapy, thank you!”
Where do you stand on this issue?
This is an incredibly complex issue and one which is clearly not going to be an easy fix. Whose side of the issue do you come down on?
Regardless of what happens, hopefully, this couple will be able to get passed this difficult period in time.
