Some people deal with trauma and grief through humor, but what would you do if your spouse cracked a cruel joke about your miscarriage to all of their friends? Would you give your partner grace and assume that falls under the category of processing grief?
Three months ago, this 32-year-old woman suffered from a miscarriage. She was still early into her pregnancy, but the loss completely devastated her.
Her 34-year-old husband, whom she’s been with for five years and got married to two years ago, is aware of how crushing the miscarriage was to her.
“He saw how bad it was. I took time off work, I cried every day for like 2 weeks, I still have moments where it just hits me out of nowhere,” she explained.
“Last night we were at his friend’s house with a few people drinking, and I went into the kitchen to get more ice. I came back, and his friends got weirdly quiet when I sat down. One of them looked horrified. Another one would barely look at me.”
“Later in the car, I asked what that was about, and after a lot of pushing, he admitted he had made some joke while I was in the kitchen about how we ‘already tried having a kid once and even that one bailed.’ That was the joke. About my miscarriage.”
Her husband tried to excuse what he did by saying they all had been drinking, and what he said came out in a way that was different from what he intended.
But she can’t get over the choice of words her husband used. She questioned her husband about why he thought it was acceptable to joke about her miscarriage.
Her husband got mad at her and claimed she always loves to make him a villain over one inappropriate moment. She began bawling, and he simply sighed back at her.
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“He said I’m acting like he cheated when really he just made an offensive joke and already said he didn’t mean it like that. But to me, it’s not even just an offensive joke,” she said.
“It’s like something private and painful that happened to my body got turned into material for his friends. I feel humiliated. And now I’m replaying all these moments where he’s told stories about me in front of people, and I laughed them off because I didn’t want to seem uptight.”
“This morning, he said I’m dragging this out and punishing him because I’m still grieving and need someone to be mad at. That honestly made me feel sick. I genuinely cannot tell if this is one of those horrible but survivable relationship moments or if this says something really bad about who he is as a person.”
Look, we all say things we don’t quite mean, or say things before thinking about the repercussions. I feel like if this was a case of saying the wrong thing, her husband wouldn’t be angry at her; he would accept that, say sorry, and move on.
But since her husband is refusing to take accountability for how hurtful he was to her, that’s not cool. If you cause someone pain or hurt their feelings, especially someone you are married to, the right thing is to apologize and own up to it.
It comes across like her husband is selfish and doesn’t care about her at all. I’m not sure why she wants to be with a man like this.
What do you think?
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By Bre Avery Zacharski
Hi, I'm Bre, Chip Chick's CEO! I have a degree in Textile/Surface Design from The Fashion Institute of Technology, and... More about Bre Avery Zacharski
