[Warning: Potentially Triggering Content]
Can you imagine learning your husband was spying on you? That would be a pretty big violation. But what if the thing he was jealous of was… your shower head?!
That’s the situation a 21-year-old bride found herself in recently. The poor woman first opened up about her husband’s despicable behavior late last week on Reddit. And in her post, she didn’t even realize just how big a red flag all this was! Get ready, this story is infuriating. But stick with it to the end for a surprise!
“Caught”
The OP began her tale:
“Like 6 months ago my husband came bursting into the bathroom to catch me using my vibrator in the shower. He threw a hissy fit about it and said that it was ‘basically cheating’ and guilted me into apologizing and promising not to do it again.”
Oof. Wrong wrong wrong. What a tool, right? And we don’t mean the thing that runs on batteries!
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Speaking of which, girl implied hubby SABOTAGED her vibrator out of jealousy or spite!
“The next time we went to use my vibrator (during sex as we basically always did) it had stopped working (mysteriously in hindsight). I often used it in the shower I guess just because that’s basically the only time I get to myself.”
Of course there’s more than one way to skin a cat. But when she kept going, so did he — and ended up revealing catching her in flagrante delicto wasn’t by mere chance!
“I eventually just turned to using the shower head and one time he pounded on the door during to ask what I was doing. Again, I didn’t really think much of it at the time. Tonight I was showering (and not doing anything else) and when I came out and he was being short and pissy with me. I asked if everything was okay and he says ‘So how was your “shower”?’ I said fine? Confused… he goes on to say he knows what I was doing in there and I responded by asking what he was talking about, to which he replied that every time I shower he sits outside the bathroom door and listens to see if I’m masturbating.”
What. In. The. Actual. Scalding. F**k. How dare this man keep tabs on her like some kind of prison guard?!
She finished her post by asking for help — but even the question proved there was still quite a distance between this woman and realizing how abusive and controlling this behavior was:
“I was so shocked I didn’t even know what to say. How can I tell him that this is a violation of my privacy and personal space without him feeling like I’m disrespecting him?”
Sorry, without him feeling like she’s disrespecting him? Who cares about that right now, we’re talking about how he’s disrespecting YOU, girl! Just the fact she still felt the situation was so volatile proves there was a deeper problem at play. This was clearly a woman who was scared of her husband and had to walk on eggshells because of his fragile little ego. Ugh!
Good Advice
There were tons of great responses not just supporting the OP and giving her valuable ways of talking to him. A great many also tried to illustrate to her the extent of the trouble. Here’s a sampling:
“You should not have to worry about disrespecting your husband when he is clearly violating your privacy. You are allowed to touch your body however you please and if he doesn’t like it he needs to talk to a therapist about his insecurities.”
“Tell him you can’t cheat when you’re alone. And he shouldn’t be jealous of something that doesn’t even have a brain.”
“This is so weird and creepy… masturbation is not cheating! Knowing your body and spending time with it is valuable and fine. His behavior is very bizarre and it seems like he is trying to police your sexual expression or at least make sure he gets to benefit from it. It’s a red flag for me.”
“He is sooo manipulative and his logic doesn’t even make sense. You could masturbate literally anywhere, since you guys aren’t together 24/7 right? He is trying to dictate a part of your life and he will not stop there. Maybe he wants to check in what you eat soon because if you try to loose weight, it could be for your affair Partner. Going out with a friend? Let’s see if you are not cheating! And what will he do if he doesn’t like what you are doing, who you meet, how long you stay there etc? He will gaslight you into thinking he is right and only wants to protect you and your relationship. Dump this creep and buy a new sex toy, please! And stay Safe, you might want to prepare some next steps in Advance (Put money aside where only you can Access, get your valuables out to a friend or family member, get a lawyer…)”
Some GREAT advice! The young wife thought so, too, as she updated:
“Thank you all for your responses. They have been eye opening. I’m feeling a little overwhelmed by how much more severe you’re making me realize this is…”
Elaborating, she added some crucial details to fill in the blanks…
More Background
They were married just last September, less than a year. However, they got together when she was just 17. He’s five years older than she is, which would make him 22 at the time. Not a huge age gap, but it definitely hints she might have been too young to know how badly she was being treated if she doesn’t have a basis of comparison. Speaking of which, she confirmed he was the only guy she’s ever had sex with, too. She thinks their sex life is fine but admits she doesn’t really know for sure.
On whether he’s abusive, she said he isn’t physically aggressive but rather “shuts down when he’s angry” and will ignore her for days on end even when she begs. However, she confirmed he’s every bit as controlling as all the readers feared:
“He is controlling in many aspects of life, which I did not really realize until now. He judges me for what I wear, what I eat, what I read, who I hang out with, what I watch, what I listen to, etc.”
Ouch. Unfortunately it’s just what everyone reading expected. But OP couldn’t see the forest for the trees, at least not until it was described to her. So it was time to take action…
The Confrontation
So in another update over the weekend she explained she would have her father (who doesn’t like the husband btw) drive down to be close when she confronted hubby about all this. She didn’t jump straight to divorce as some suggested, trying to calmly give him a chance to see how he was wrong. She explained on Sunday:
“I debated all day Friday about how exactly to approach this situation and how I could trigger this conversation without him shutting down or getting angry. I decided to casually approach the conversation and ask him how he’d feel about me getting another vibrator (to replace the one that mysteriously broke after he ‘caught’ ‘me using it in the shower). In response he asked ‘what for?’ To which I replied ‘because it feels good’. I knew this would be his response, but it was something along the lines of ‘what am I not good enough’? As it usually was in the past. I explained to him that it has nothing to do with him not being good enough, and that sex is supposed to be fun and experimental and interesting and that it was just something that would make it better for both of us.”
Good try, but spoiler alert, this convo was never going to go well…
“He then suggested that I just wanted it to use on myself, to which I asked if that would be a problem. He told me that I know how he feels about that and so I asked him why he was bothered by the idea of me masturbating. He got very defensive and asked why I would want that when I could have him, so I asked if he ever felt like he’d rather just pleasure himself rather than going through the motions of having sex. He said no and that he’s ‘not a beta who spends his days stroking when he could be doing anything more productive’. I explained to him that that was okay if it was his preference but that sometimes my sexual desires are to pleasure myself versus having sex.”
Yes! Good for you, girl! Unfortunately, as expected from an insecure “beta” like this, he couldn’t understand why he should let her have her own preferences:
“That’s when his same ridiculous argument came out of that being ‘basically cheating’.”
Thankfully this time the crowdsourcing gave her backup!
“Pulling from another Redditor, I explained that cheating involves multiple people, and that it is impossible to be cheating if I am alone. He told me to ‘f**k off and go stick the shower head between my legs’.”
UGH THIS GUY! But girl was resolute!
“I started to get upset and realized that here is when I always back down. I feel the need to apologize and make him feel better, I’d usually have started something and would end up guilt f**king him because I felt bad, but I didn’t. I told him that he made me feel like he was trying to control me and my body and that I wasn’t okay with that.”
Hell yeah! (Again, didn’t go well.)
“He told me I could ‘go be a f**king whore somewhere else then’ and got up off the couch and ran upstairs. I could hear him slamming my drawers open and acting like he was putting my clothes in a bag. I resisted the urge to run up there after him and just decided to sit there and see what would happen. Eventually he came back downstairs and apologized and said that he’s very uncomfortable with the idea of me masturbating in our home, when I asked him to explain why, he said because it makes him feel unwanted. I told him that this isn’t true, and that I do want him, but sometimes I just want that and he said ‘okay I guess’.”
Oof, what a child.
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While things were calm enough, the OP knew she couldn’t just let it go there because “it would just get swept under the rug like it always does”:
“I’d go on putting up with this until it came full-circle again and I was not going to do that to myself.”
Instead, she grilled him on the worst part of it, the spying:
“I decided to ask him about him telling me that he listened to me when I showered. I told him I wanted to talk about it and he told me that he was just joking and that ‘I’m a f**king moron if I actually thought he was serious’.”
Wow. No offense to Reddit which turned out to be really helpful in this instance, but damn some of these boys raised on the internet don’t realize how dumb their terrible defenses sound in person. She held his feet to the fire:
“I told him that it was an odd joke, especially considering he was angry and very much not laughing when he told me. He insisted that he was joking and I told him that i didn’t believe him. He then responded by saying he wouldn’t do it again. This went in circles for a bit before he finally admitted to deciding to do this after catching me in the shower. Instead of accusing him of anything, I asked him if he thought that was an invasion of my privacy, to which he informed me that we are married and I do not have privacy.”
And there the eff it is. She doesn’t have privacy. Or agency. Because she’s his property. Obviously that’s what he really believes! Major props to her for getting him to admit it! She pushed:
“I told him that was an issue and that in order to have a healthy marriage we both needed privacy. He was determined that there is so such thing as privacy in marriage, so I flat out asked him if he wanted me in the bathroom while he was pooping. He said no, I said ‘right , because you want your privacy’. He told me that’s different.”
We cannot believe the patience on this woman. She must be Saint Jill, patron of weary souls who needs to rub one out in the shower every now and then! Unfortunately her calm logical approach didn’t work with this dork. She lamented:
“Over the course of the next 10 minutes or so, this escalated from a simple conversation into a full blown screaming match, and we got absolutely nowhere in our argument. It was like talking to a brick wall. I was so heated by this point that I don’t even remember what was said, but he eventually told me I was: a f**king worthless whore, that I had nothing without him, that my vag was disgusting and made him sick, that I was fat and no one will ever want me (I’m 125 lbs btw), that I’m lucky someone like him would even look in my direction, etc, etc, etc.”
Wow.
Finally she’d had enough!
“I could barely see my phone through the tears and I called my dad and asked him to come get me. My husband looked at me and said ‘your f**king dad isn’t driving 6 hours to come get you you dumb f**k’.”
The way this man talks to her!
“I started to grab some random things of mine and yelled that he was here staying in town, and he broke down and started sobbing. He told me that he knows he’s controlling, that he has serious issues, and that he’s terrified of losing me. He said that he knows he’s not good enough for me and that he’s so afraid of losing me that he’s pushing me away to save himself the inevitable heartache. He said that if he ever lost me he’d k*** himself.”
ARGH! Yet another abuser control tactic! Disgusting! And thankfully after having her eyes opened by commenters, she saw it, too. She wrote:
“As I watched this grown ass man snotting and crying in a heap on the floor, I kinda realized that I feel nothing for him. Like, nothing. The blinders I’ve been wearing were removed and I no longer saw the handsome, intelligent, caring, strong man I once did. I saw a pathetic, abusive, controlling, sad, and sick person. I came to the realization in that moment that there’s no fixing this, and even if he does change, I would never trust him or see him in the same way again.”
Her father picked her up, during which time the definitely-not-a-beta guy “hid in the bathroom.” Unfortunately his attacks weren’t over…
“Before we had even gotten to the hotel my husband began texting me. It started with pleading with me to stay and forgive him and turned into insults over the course of the next day or so. He never threatened me physically, but told me if I didn’t come home I’d lose him forever, that I’d be losing out on the best man I’d ever have, etc, etc. he told me that his friends laughed at him for being with such an ugly bitch, that his parents hate me because they know I’m not good enough for him, that I couldn’t get pregnant because I’m probably a f**king whore banging other guys on the side, that he was embarrassed to be seen with me in public, and so much more.”
The Aftermath
Bless this horrible little man for at least showing his true colors less than a year into the marriage and not 10 years down the road! It was exactly what she needed to wake up and take control of her life. She wrote:
“I’m leaving. And not because Reddit told me to, because I’m genuinely not even remotely interested in staying with him and because I deserve better.”
HELL! YES! GIRL!
She explained how she’s going to stay with a girlfriend from school until she finishes college next month. Then she’ll get a “fresh start” somewhere. Her dad — clearly a real man — has been a huge help during all this, so the suggestion to invite him to town before the confrontation was clutch. She wrote:
“I’m currently in bed in a hotel room with my dad and have never felt more loved or safe. He is going to go over to the house tomorrow and retrieve my belongings, after which he is helping me move into my friend’s apartment and then heading home.”
Amazing. Finally she thanked everyone who gave her advice and helped open her eyes:
“I don’t have much to say at this point other than thank you again to everyone who made me realize how dangerous this situation could have been. I was determined that we were not going to divorce but after Friday night I don’t think there’s any going back to that. I’m over it. I might update again, I might not. But making that post genuinely might have saved my life. Thank you.”
We’re so glad to hear such a happy ending! Unfortunately they’re all too rare in cases like these.
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, help is available. Consider calling the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 800-799-7233, or text START to 88788, or go to https://www.thehotline.org/.
[Image via Universal/YouTube.]
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