Hypothetical questions are the silent k!llers of relationships. We have all played the game. You ask your partner if they would still love you if you were a worm, or who they would save in a zombie apocalypse. It is supposed to be a fun way to pass the time on a road trip, but sometimes the answers get a little too real. One dad on Reddit recently found out that his ego is apparently more fragile than a saucer in a sci-fi movie when his wife’s answer to an alien invasion scenario caused him to storm out of the house and question his entire marriage.
The OP (Original Poster) is a thirty-seven-year-old man who got his feelings hurt during a casual conversation about the end of the world. His wife and their eleven-year-old daughter were joking around about alien invasions and apocalyptic survival strategies. It is the kind of silly talk families have over dinner. But then the daughter asked the ultimate question: would her mom protect her?
The wife, like almost every mother on the planet would, answered honestly. She told her daughter, “I love you more than I’ll love anybody else in the world.” She didn’t stop there. She put her arm around the OP and joked that she and her daughter would use him as a “shield” against danger. Most dads would laugh this off. They would flex and say, “Yeah, I’m the protector, that’s my job.” But not this guy. To him, this wasn’t a joke about biology or parental instinct. It was a declaration of war.
The OP didn’t take the joke well. In fact, he took it personally. He picked up his keys, dropped a passive-aggressive “gee thanks, go ahead and start lunch without me,” and walked out the door. His wife was baffled. She tried to explain the obvious logic that you don’t choose a spouse over a child, but he wasn’t hearing it. He felt like she had just “sh*t” on their marriage vows.
He drove around to cool off, eventually landing at his sister’s house. He cried to his sister about how upset he was, and she invited him to dinner. While he ignored his wife’s calls, he sat there stewing in his resentment. He admitted that he always felt his wife loved the kids more than him, and this hypothetical alien scenario just confirmed his deepest insecurity. He questioned why he gave her his loyalty if she was just going to casually “throw him to the wolves” in a made-up fantasy.
But here is where the story takes a turn from “insecure dad” to “delusional narcissist.” The OP started comparing his wife to his sister, wondering if there were other women out there who would value their spouse above their own children. He seems to think that “loyalty” means his wife should be willing to let their eleven-year-old get abducted by Martians as long as he is safe.
The real kicker comes at the very end of his post. The OP reveals the dark underbelly of his “sacrifice.” He claims he is regretting the sacrifices he made for his wife because he had “other options.” Specifically, he mentions “women in their early twenties” who have hit on him. Yes, this thirty-seven-year-old man is actually trying to use the imaginary attention of Gen Z girls to validate why his wife should love him more than their child.
It is honestly embarrassing. He is mad that his wife has a maternal instinct, so he retreats to a fantasy world where twenty-year-olds are lining up to date a man who gets jealous of his own pre-teen daughter. He wants a partner who puts him first, above literally everything else, including the survival of their offspring.
So is the OP the ahole? Yes. He took a lighthearted conversation about aliens and turned it into a referendum on his wife’s love. He made the entire situation about his own ego. The fact that he is threatening his marriage with hypothetical “other options” shows that he is the one with the loyalty problem, not her.
What would you do if your partner got mad that you would save your child instead of them? Would you apologize, or would you help them pack their bags? Let us know in the comments if you think this dad needs to grow up or if his wife went too far!