Pregnancy is a beautiful, miraculous journey that also happens to be a total body horror movie. Your feet swell, your organs get rearranged like a bad game of Tetris, and your skin stretches to the point where even the softest fabric feels like sandpaper. When you reach the third trimester, the goal isn’t looking cute or being stylish. The goal is survival. One mom-to-be on Reddit recently discovered a life hack to deal with the misery of a growing belly, but her husband decided that his personal comfort was more important than her not having painful friction rashes.
The OP (Original Poster) is currently seven or eight months pregnant. While she hasn’t gained a massive amount of weight, her belly has popped significantly. As a result, her regular underwear has turned into a torture device. It cuts into her sides and the bottom of her belly, causing a painful rash due to the friction. If you have never experienced a pregnancy rash in a sensitive area, just imagine wearing a belt made of sandpaper for twelve hours a day.
In a moment of desperate innovation, she raided her husband’s drawer while getting dressed. She tried on a pair of his size large boxers and immediately saw the light. They were loose. They were breezy. They didn’t dig into her rash. It was the most comfortable she had felt in months. When she told her husband she had borrowed a pair, he was a little weirded out but ultimately gave her the thumbs up. It seemed like a win for marital teamwork until she made the fatal mistake of grabbing the “wrong” pair.
Fast forward a few days to bedtime. The husband notices his wife is wearing a specific pair of his boxers and absolutely flips out. Why? Because these weren’t just any Hanes from a three-pack. These were his “good” bamboo underwear. He launched into a long rant about the superior quality and comfort of bamboo, explaining why these specific undergarments were the holy grail of his wardrobe.
The irony here is thick enough to cut with a knife. This man stood there lecturing his heavily pregnant wife about the importance of his comfort while denying her the only thing that stopped her skin from chafing. The OP apologized and promised to steer clear of the bamboo reserves, but the husband wasn’t hearing it. He revoked her boxer privileges entirely. He told her to go buy her own bigger underwear and stop “stealing” his.
Let’s be real for a second. When your partner is 3D printing a human being inside their body, the concept of “mine” and “yours” should go out the window regarding comfort items. If she wants your pillow, it is hers. If she wants your leftover fries, hand them over. And if she needs your oversized boxers because her own clothes are hurting her, you don’t ban her from the drawer. You ask her if she wants you to order more on Amazon.
The OP suspects this wasn’t really about the bamboo. She thinks he just didn’t want her wearing his underwear in general and used the “special fabric” excuse to shut the whole operation down. It screams of a weird territorial issue. Maybe he thinks it’s unsexy, or maybe he’s just selfish. Either way, telling a woman who is two months away from giving birth to “go buy her own” instead of sharing what is already in the house is a level of petty that is hard to comprehend.
So is the OP the ahole? Absolutely not. She is trying to navigate the most uncomfortable physical experience of her life. Her husband, however, needs to get a grip. He can buy more bamboo boxers. He cannot, however, buy his way out of the doghouse if he keeps prioritizing his waistband over his wife’s well-being.
What would you do if your partner banned you from using their stuff while you were pregnant? Would you go buy your own, or would you steal the bamboo boxers anyway out of spite? Let us know in the comments if you think the husband is being totally unreasonable!