Pregnancy is a beautiful and miraculous journey that also does completely wild things to your body and your logic. Your center of gravity shifts, your joints loosen up, and your feet can swell to twice their normal size. Most expecting mothers naturally transition into a wardrobe of stretchy pants and supportive sneakers. But every once in a while, you encounter someone who refuses to let biology dictate her fashion choices. One husband on Reddit is currently in the doghouse because his pregnant wife let her footwear pride get the best of her, and the internet has a lot of thoughts about her misplaced anger.
The Original Poster is a thirty year old construction worker married to a thirty eight year old senior corporate lawyer named Charlotte. Charlotte is five months pregnant and recently started commuting back to her office in the city. Despite growing a human being inside of her, Charlotte absolutely insists on wearing heels everywhere she goes. Her husband constantly suggests she pack a spare pair of flats just in case, but she flatly refuses. She claims wearing heels is a “matter of pride.”
Now anyone who has ever been pregnant knows exactly how this story is going to end. At five months along, Charlotte’s feet started to swell. Stuffing swollen pregnant feet into rigid corporate pumps is a recipe for absolute misery. The husband tried to warn her, but she dug her stilettos in and continued to leave the house without a backup plan.
The inevitable finally happened. The OP got a call from Charlotte while he was at work. She was in absolute agony and realized she could not physically walk to the train station to commute home in her heels. So she made a completely unreasonable demand. She wanted her husband, who was working on a construction site an hour away, to abandon his job to buy her cheap flip flops or bring his personal sneakers to her office.
Let us pause and look at the logistics here. He works in construction, which is not exactly a job where you can just casually clock out early because your spouse made a bad wardrobe choice. The OP asked his boss if he could leave to help his wife, and the boss understandably said no because they had a lot of work to do. He could not just walk off a job site and risk his employment over a preventable shoe crisis.
The husband did the rational thing and offered a perfectly fine compromise. He told Charlotte his shift did not end for another couple of hours, but he asked if she would be willing to just wait at her desk until he was done. She could have kicked her shoes off under her desk, ordered a snack, and waited for her knight in shining trainers to arrive. But Charlotte said she did not want to wait. She chose to torture herself instead.
When the OP finally got home, he walked into a massive guilt trip. He found his wife curled up and sobbing. She had forced herself to walk to the train in her heels, and now she was furious at him. She actually told him that he should have insisted on leaving work to help her, completely ignoring the fact that he could have been fired for insubordination. When he tried to comfort her, she pushed him away.
Let us be incredibly real for a second. Charlotte is a very senior corporate lawyer working in a major city. She is a highly educated and wealthy woman with a smartphone. She could have ordered a pair of flats on a delivery app. She could have called an Uber or a taxi right to the front door of her office building. She could have paid a junior associate or an intern a ridiculous amount of money to run to a pharmacy and buy her some slippers.
Instead, she chose the most painful route possible just so she could play the victim and punish her husband. It is incredibly unfair to ignore someone’s solid advice, intentionally walk into a painful situation, and then demand they risk their livelihood to save you from your own stubbornness. The OP feels awful because he hates seeing his wife in pain, but he literally did nothing wrong.
The husband is absolutely not the ahole in this scenario. Charlotte’s pride created this problem, and her pride prevented her from finding a logical solution. Pregnancy hormones are tough, but they do not excuse toxic behavior. What would you do if your partner demanded you leave work because their feet hurt? Would you risk the wrath of your boss, or would you tell them to hail a cab like this guy did? Let us know in the comments!
Bet she does not do that again.