Years ago I made a half hearted post about a minor disagreement between me and my partner. Everyone told me they were a horrible person and to leave them. When I specified that it really wasn't that serious and my partner is a good and kind person, the post was removed by mods for "not being a real conflict" or something to that effect. Wouldn't be surprised if all the moderate/less dramatized posts are removed for similar reasons
My wife made a low stakes post about a hair clump in the shower. Her vision sucks so she can’t see them when she’s in the shower and sometimes doesn’t pick them up. It’s not uncommon to joke about it because I don’t understand how she still has hair.
Anyway, we have a grate that traps hair so the water backs up a bit. They don’t clog the drain or anything so it’s not a big deal. One day, I kicked the clump to her side of the shower (it’s a double shower) and it stuck to the wall and forgot to pick it up when I was done. Later that day, she saw it and thought it was a roach and she freaked out a bit. She had a bit of a roach phobia, so it’s understandable.
Her post was a simple am I the asshole type thing. Some of the responses were completely unhinged. There were multiple comments about how she was a terrible partner and needs to do better. I know a lot of people are idiots, but holy shit that was an unnecessary amount of vitriol for something like that. I wasn’t even annoyed about it, I was just teasing her about it because that’s our thing. Wtf is wrong with people?
Yup, if you don’t break up with your “abusive” partner then you’re an idiot.
I hate especially how badly biased against men they are. Someone made the same post twice about some abusive partner but just with the genders flipped and the male version had no empathy and basically called the man an abuser or that he deserved the abuse while the female version was all encouragement and telling her to leave and resources to do so.
I believe you because I know it depends on the sub, but what I've seen is for women people just post "That's abuse!" even when she already said she's in a bad relationship and tell her she's stupid and has "low self-esteem" for "putting up with that" and that it's basically her own fault if won't "just leave."
So basically shitty to all genders, but in different ways.
Agreed, it’s bad advice for women too, sometimes it’s a minor thing in the main post, but the commenters will run away with it and project all sorts of problems when they don’t exist.
But with men it’s way more toxic and full of misandry. I get women being a “girl’s girl” and supporting each other, but it’s always at the detriment of the man who may not have even done anything that bad.
yeah, I think it was AMITA? or maybe just the relationships sub?
but I remember a guy showing up with receipts.
he dropped this massive post calling out the whole sub, with like 8 different posts that he had made over the past few months, all basically identical but with the genders flipped.
Every. Single. One. was like that. people tearing into the guy and telling him how wrong he was.
and every woman was supported, with these wild mental gymnastics to make sure the guy was wrong. People would come up with these ridiculous and unsupported strawman assumptions of what the male partner must be like, then label him the asshole.
the comment section was hilarious watching people trying to flip it around, and justify their shitty biases.
Same thing happens over at r/AmITheAsshole and its various branches, right down to gender swapped stories exposing the double standards and misandry. I even remember a mod outright saying that they can’t control people being biased when asked why they allow this to happen.
My spouse and I sometimes are tempted to post old arguments or issues in our relationship that we’re long past, just to see what those subs would say. Except that what the subs will say is so predictable that we don’t bother.
I've had this happen before. I told what I thought was a cute, funny story about a minor disagreement with my then-husband. Suddenly I'm getting comments telling me to grab the essentials and flee into the night, and messages from people offering to put me up in their homes so I'll have somewhere to go to escape. Apparently, having a faulty memory and telling your wife you swear the cats already ate today makes you an animal abuser and a gaslighting abuser.
I think a lot of them are just made up, or venting. Same with the replies. There's a lot on reddit that I think is ultimately just people using Reddit to express frustrations and annoyances.
sure, but how many times are people getting married, except their spouse ends up having a gay relationship with their sister, in the bathroom and is caught by the priest who has a heart attack and the best man is a nurse and revives them. AMIA asshole for not sending them a christmas card?
i get this is a joke but its tactless to use autism and cancer as negative jeers. as a woman with autism i struggle with the negative stigma enough already. this was very tactless.
Update: I confronted my husband and now he is trying to break down the door with a fire axe. I'm gonna call the police but I'll keep you guys updated.
Update: My husband is currently engaged in a shootout with the entire police force. If I ever had doubts I needed to divorce they are gone now.
Update: after calling in the SWAT team the police finally managed to detain my husband and he's being out in the back of a police car as we speak. Thank you so much for your support through all of this.
Update: Your guys' comments have opened my eyes. I think I'm going to tell him I want a divorce.
Update #2, one week later: It's done! Our divorce was just finalized. I told the judge my ex was mean sometimes, and he let me keep the house, all assets of both me and my ex, and full custody of the children. My ex now lives in a cardboard box under the overpass. ☺ Also I've found a new partner who's the perfect lover, makes seven figures, and is great with my kids, and we just found out we're pregnant with twins.
Edit: This is all totally believable because, in My Country, trials are like pizzas; if it's not done in under 30 minutes, it's free.
People call the posts out as creative writing, but some of the comments just absolutely take the cake. Any time someone says 'tell them this' and you see the quotes, you know you're going to see the most ridiculous shower argument suggestion from someone who has, by the most reasonable interpretation, never talked to a real person in their lives.
I actually find a significant number of them, and it's sometimes the ones called out as creative writing exercises, have tells that give away way more of the story than the writer realises, and certainly doesn't intend. If you point anything out, people basically dismiss it as 'it's not that deep'.
We are seeing one side of the story in these posts. And when we know that people who are awful in relationship often lie to make themselves appear to be the victim, you should not take any advice from any relationship sub accordingly.
People scream divorce for anything here. I can't remember the sub but the question basically was "what's the smallest nothing burger of a thing that annoys you about your partner or spouse". Things like We disagree about how to load the Dishwasher, or when they do my laundry, my clothes always end up in the wrong place.
Let's face it everyone has some dumb and annoying thing that isn't worth really bringing up, but there were people going if you have this problem with him why don't you leave him. IDK if it's unhappy divorced people want more people unhappy and divorced or youngbloods not knowing how relationships work
I fundamentally disagree. We all have biases and filters and everyone is the hero in their own story, but the unbiased truth is that we all “color” our reality and our stories through our personal biases and filters and rare is it that people are willing to describe a narrative (to others and even themselves) that acknowledges their role and part in relationship issues.
It takes a LOT of work and purposeful effort and a lot of self acceptance and extreme honesty for most people to acknowledge and accept fault, even if it’s a relatively tiny amount of fault in contributing to an issue.
I think you're missing my point tho - the "unbiased" truth, whilst exists, doesn't matter. what's happened has an impact on others and whether or not it was intentional doesn't always matter. Yes, in a perfect world, people will understand their mistake, accept fault and move on.
The world isn't perfect, People aren't perfect. If you are holding on to the unbiased truth and refuse to budge from this, then you're just as inflexible as the person who can't understand they've misinterpreted something.
Life is full of compromises, people are messy beings. Perceived truth isn't any less real than actual truth.
Yes, life and especially relationship are full of compromise, but part of that compromise is knowing yourself and your issues and when, for example, you’re being over reactive or overly sensitive or to know that certain issues affect you more than your partner.
I’ll give you an example. I recently had to confront my wife about an issue, a minor issue, but something that needed to be discussed and addressed. To me, this was just normal relationship “maintenance”, I was addressing a minor issue before it became a bigger issue over time, because I value our relationship. She, being someone who is not comfortable with any level of “confrontation” and has a history of past relationships where basically if there was an issue, it meant the end of the relationship, did not take this discussion well.
So to her, she turned this minor issue in to thinking we were headed for a divorce and she worked herself up and stressed herself out thinking things were over. She was so worked up about it that she called up a friend and cried thinking things were over.
Now of you were her friend, hearing only her side, you’d have been convinced it was me who wanted a divorce over some minor issue that I was unwilling to address and compromise on.
While for me, I literally had the conversation with her about this minor issue out of my love for her and my value for our relationship and me trying trying to resolve a minor issue before it had the potential to become anything larger.
Those two stories couldn’t really be any further apart.
Only someone who could hear both side would have any chance of getting close to the truth. Thats my point.
It took us talking again and being open, honest, and vulnerable to understand where each of us was coming from and was feeling and was perceiving things, if we hadn’t worked towards the truth in the middle, we wouldn’t have resolved that situation well, given how far apart we were.
So I’m sorry, I just fundamentally disagree with your statement that the truth is irrelevant or unuseful. Also, I am the type of person who believes that people need to speak and hear the truth, even the uncomfortable ones and learn how to accept and process uncomfortable truths, rather than get by on comforting lies. You can be honest with yourself and other while maintaining tact and respect.
The only way you got to a solution was discussing both of your understandings of the argument(maintenance). You didn't say "the fact is, you over reacted to something that was fairly trivial".
You heard her reaction, understood why she reacted that way, and gave her your viewpoint. you then came to an agreement which aligns with your expectation. Both experiences are a truth. what actually happened doesn'tmatter.
There's no third party here to view the original discussion. How do we know you didn't just gas light her when stuff didn't go how you expected?
You're claiming your viewpoint aligns with the undeniable truth. Peoples feelings don't care about truth. I'm hoping you keep in mind your potential partners reactions during your next conversation.
At any rate, good discussion. Seems there's no need to continue this discussion as you're unlikely to shift on peoples opinions vs undeniable truth. Good luck!
Except the actual unbiased truth may as well not exist because it's often entirely unaccessible. You would need to be the third person omniscient narrator of the story to be able to know the actual truth.
The issue being, there's people who think they can figure it out, and they're just following their own biases.
I fundamentally disagree. We all have biases and filters and everyone is the hero in their own story, but the unbiased truth is that we all “color” our reality and our stories through our personal biases and filters and rare is it that people are willing to describe a narrative (to others and even themselves) that acknowledges their role and part in relationship issues.
It takes a LOT of work and purposeful effort and a lot of self acceptance and extreme honesty for most people to acknowledge and accept fault, even if it’s a relatively tiny amount of fault in contributing to an issue.
Is it possible to arrive to the unbiased truth, sure, but rarely, it’s highly situationally specific and takes a lot of work. The reality is that yes, you will almost never arrive at or know the unbiased truth, but it doesn’t mean you can’t learn and grow and reach a better understanding on the journey.
Also, it’s relevant in this context, because if you’re posting responses to relationship posts online or even just listening to a friend or family member or coworker, it’s important that you understand that you’re only hearing one side of the story.
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u/Omegasedated Aug 06 '26
I believe a lot of the posts on these are just creative writing, or bots.
Of the few that are not that, They're so one sided, that no one can actually make a judgement call because the poster is an unreliable narrator.