The funny (in a tragic kind of way) thing about manipulative and abusive relationships is that sometimes you don't realize you're in one until something so ridiculous happens that you can't deny it any longer. One Reddit user is facing that realization after her husbands ultimatum, an assault by his friend, and the victim blaming that followed.
Yup, it's as bad we it seems. Here is her original post:
I met my husband 6 years ago when we both had just graduated college. He was a lovely guy, handsome and very well put together. He loved muscle cars and weight lifting and I loved everything about him. I fell in love with him instantly and was over the moon when he asked me to marry him.
A year into our marriage, I became pregnant with our son and gained about 30 lbs. I was 5'3" 125 lbs before the baby and 155 lbs after the baby. I still fit into the same clothing sizes so I didn't think I had gained too much weight and that it would come off with breastfeeding and some more exercise.
After the baby, my husband started pressuring me to lose the weight. He said that his friends were making comments about how fat I had gotten and that he was not as attracted to me as he was before I had the baby. He gave me an ultimatum that I either would have to lose the 30 lbs in six months or he would leave me. I was very upset about the demand, but I didn't want to lose him so I tried my hardest to lose the weight.
Every day for months I would wake up and go to hot yoga for 90 minutes. After I got home from work, I would run or do some body weight exercises. I tried to keep my calorie count below 1200 so that I would lose 2 or more lbs per week. The weight slowly but surely started to come off and I was back down to 130 lbs by the end of the six months. My husband was happy and things looked like they would be okay.
After I lost the weight, I noticed a shift in the attitude of my husband's friends. Most of them are perfectly nice guys, but a few of them are absolute pieces of shit (the same ones who called me fat). Once I returned to my old weight, these friends started to make comments about me and how sexy I was. I told my husband to make them stop and he said that he would speak with them, but the rude comments never stopped. I channeled all of my frustrations into working out and I lost an additional 15 lbs of body fat and got more toned.
This past weekend, my husband's friends were over at the house and one of them grabbed me and tried to grope me. I told my husband and even though he was angry at his friend, he was still angry at me. My husband said that I was leading his friends on by losing so much weight and that I was trying to make myself skinny so that I could cheat on him. I was disgusted by this accusation and packed my bags and left for my mom's house.
Last night, my husband called me and begged for me to come back home. He says that he knows that he was unfair and that he won't let his friend come over anymore, but I am so tired of dealing with this that I'm not sure I want him back. He's the one that told me to lose weight, but now he's blaming me for being too skinny and I'm afraid he's going to make me develop an eating disorder. But I also still love my husband and it hurts me to be apart from him.
I'm so confused and I'm not sure what to do.
Reddit swooped in with responses SO DANG FAST. Some of them had to be censored or edited because people had some CHOICE words about this.
I Can't Imagine Why
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He blamed you for his friend's decision to grope you.
He accused you of trying to cheat.
He pressured you into losing weight to win the approval of his friends.
I can't imagine why in the world you would go back to that.
Dead And Gone
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WTF!? This is utter bullshit behavior. These people have no respect for you or your husband -- they're not friends. With friends like these, you don't need enemies.
My boys are like brothers to me, so naturally, the wives/girlfriends are like my sisters. I would never imagine to disrespect them like that.
The guy you married six years ago is probably dead and gone by now.
- Mr_Julez
Raise A Baby
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Because you were sexually assaulted, he accused you of trying to cheat. That's no person to raise a baby with.
Not Normal
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Your husband and his friends are actual dicks. It's normal for you to gain weight during pregnancy. It's normal to take a while to lose it. It's normal to want and encourage your spouse to get back in shape. It's NOT normal to give an ultimatum to lose weight immediately after having a baby or get dumped, it's NOT normal for his friends to make nasty comments about his wife and mother of his newborn child, and it's definitely not normal for him to accuse you of anything because you've lost weight, especially when that was the thing he f^cking wanted in the first place.
I would seriously reconsider leaving this piece of work for good if I were you.
Stay Away For Your Baby
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Remember this...
If you go back, this is the man your son will model himself on. He'll think treating women like this is the norm.
I know you want better than that for your kid, it's obvious through your post.
Stay away for yourself. And if you can't do it for yourself, please stay away for your sweet baby boy, who does not need to be shaped into a sh!tbag.
A Sexy Trophy
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His focus was all about making you a sexy trophy to show his friends. His communications with his (shitty) friends has made them believe your boundaries are very loose. I would be concerned with how far they will go with your husbands subtle encouragement to make you a sex object.
Ever
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Don't go back. Ever.
Your husbands "friends" are pieces of sh!t. Also, your husband is also one for being so easily persuaded by them to basically hate his own wife.
And once you were "good looking" again, they came back. And showed no respect at all to you.
Leading his friends on by losing so much weight.
ARE. YOU. F^CKING. KIDDING. ME
He loved you when you were "normal weight". He blackmailed you into losing weight when his friends didn't find you attractive anymore. And then he had the audacity to make you believe his pieces of sh!t friends are like that because of you.
Hell. F^cking. No. You deserve better. And you need to be aware that he will never stop getting influenced by his friends. Their opinion will always be more important to him than you.
Red Flags Abound
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There are too many people in your marriage. Your husband is weak willed and indecisive, his insecurities are making him dependent on his friends approval over you, and they are treating you like communal property. There is so much not-OK, boundary crossing, control-freak sh!t happening here even before the guy groped you. Like expressing their opinions on your post-pregnancy body to your husband. Like blackmailing you into weight loss, and then freaking out when you did it too well. It's not good enough that your husband has promised to not have the guy who groped you back in your house - he needs to cut that guy from his life. Period. Along with any other bag of dicks who went along with this shit. By not removing these people from his life, he is placing his friend's approval over your well being.
That needs to be the baseline before you can even decide IF this marriage worth saving. Other posters have mentioned that his love and respect are tied to your weight. He wants you thin, but not too thin, least anyone else notice how shiny his toy is, and is willing to be emotionally abusive to achieve what he wants. What other areas of your lives does he have control over? These are huge, communist party parade sized red flags here.
Red flags abound. Until you and your marriage matter more to your husband than what his friends think of you and your marriage, it's doomed.
Nope Out
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Are you kidding me?!?
Strike 1) Ultimatum to lose weight RIGHT AFTER having HIS Baby.
Strike 2) Did nothing while his friends made lewd comments about your body
Strike 3) Blame you for getting sexually assaulted by his friend.
OMG girl nope the f^ck out of there! He respects his friends more than he respects you. You are clearly just a hot piece of ass to him and nothing more. F^ck that.
Bet $500
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He was upset with you for gaining a very reasonable amount of weight after a pregnancy. He wasn't attracted to you and he told you to lose weight or he was leaving. You lost the weight. A friend groped you and he got mad at you and accused you of leading them on.
I would bet $500 right now that sometime between you gaining weight and his ultimatum, this man cheated on you (and blamed you for it.)
H/T: Reddit
In fact, some mistakes are so astronomical that they're remembered for decades afterwards, leaving the one who made the mistake a legacy of being a dumba**. Here are a few of them!!!
U/ronjans24 asked: What was the biggest mistake in human history?
Some may argue that the existence of the Universe was a mistake. I disagree. It was clearly Zayn leaving One Direction. But these next few were pretty bad too.
If you do the math, this is also the reason why Hentai exists.
I'll say the wrong turn Franz Ferdinand's driver made that went right in front of Gavrilo Princip.
EDIT: yes I'm aware war may still have broken out even if Franz Ferdinand wasn't assassinated
Imagine you're Gavrilo Princip. The assassination plot you and your friends had been cooking up for about the last year or so has been a complete and total disaster, just a monumental f*ck-up of the highest degree. You're staked out at this deli thinking maybe, just maybe the car will pass by, and by some stroke of sheer luck, it does.
If you're Princip, this is nothing short of serendipity.
Petition to return to the ocean.
Ocean Surf GIFGiphy"Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans."
"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move." - Douglas Adams
This was, in fact, a monumental mistake.
Sears not beating Amazon to the punch.
Blockbuster not buying Netflix.
You thought THOSE were bad? Well gear up for their next few, because they are 100% accurate. Except the one about Cats, that movie slaps.
I don’t know sports, but sure.
Seahawks not running it.
I used to wear a Seahawks jersey whenever I took a test because I knew I would pass when I shouldn't.
CATS is great, y'all are just boring.
GiphyThe Emoji Movie.
That live action movie about Cats is also up there.
Very fair point.
Social Media.
Humans are not wired to have that many social interactions and maintain that many relationships. Plus the echochambers it allows people to create for themselves, no matter how conspiratorial or vile their beliefs, means that stupid/evil people are no longer shunned into changing their mind.
Not sure it was worth being able to see what a celebrity had for lunch or what new "dance" your younger cousin and her tween friends are doing.
But in all seriousness, some horrible things may now have happened if the right thing was halted at the right time.
Washington called it.
George Washington Disney GIF by Hamilton: An American MusicalGiphyVoting for people based on what side of the political spectrum they're on. George Washington himself advised against political parties because he thought they would cause too much division in this country. Unfortunately for everyone, he was right.
Big oops on that one.
Barack Obama mocking Donald Trump at the Correspondents Dinner might have led directly to his 2016 run....
"Now, I know that he's taken some flak lately, but no one is happier, no one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than The Donald," Obama said. "And that's because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter — like, did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?"
Then he turned serious: "But all kidding aside, obviously, we all know about your credentials and breadth of experience. For example — no, seriously, just recently, in an episode of 'Celebrity Apprentice' — at the steakhouse, the men's cooking team did not impress the judges from Omaha Steaks. And there was a lot of blame to go around. But you, Mr. Trump, recognized that the real problem was a lack of leadership. And so ultimately, you didn't blame Lil Jon or Meatloaf. You fired Gary Busey. And these are the kind of decisions that would keep me up at night. Well handled, sir. Well handled."
This is the best Star Wars and no one can change my mind.
I'll take 'Star Wars Christmas Special' for $100.
That atrocious pile of manure gave us Boba Fett, so without the Christmas Special there won't be The Mandalorian.
Wow, in this article, I openly admitted my love for Cats AND The Star Wars Holiday Special. So maybe my existence was the biggest mistake of all.
ANYWAY, I hope you enjoyed, and I hope you all feel a little bit better about yourself. Because when push comes to shove, at least you didn't accidentally start World War I