In the post, shared on Nov. 10 by u/Pale_Mushroom_911, the woman described herself as someone who lets “almost anything slide” and avoids standing up for herself. She said her toddler was napping on the couch while she cut raw chicken for dinner. Her elderly dog isn’t allowed downstairs during naps because her clicking nails could wake the baby.
When she called out that the dog couldn’t come down, her husband, who was sitting at the table building a cardboard helmet, got up to redirect the dog. Because she was busy at the counter, she repeated herself. She said he took it as criticism and snapped that she didn’t need to “get an attitude.”
She said she snapped back, then kept going in what she called a “baffled ramble,” saying things like “wow. You’re just so awful,” adding, “Or whatever I said.” She said he responded with something like, “You’re gonna wake him. Shut up,” and then yelled, “Shut your f—--- mouth.” She said she replied with profanity of her own. She wrote that he later apologized, saying it was a misunderstanding.
“How would y’all react to this? Cause I’m trying to decide do I let this go or be sour while he has the day off tomorrow?!”
In an edit, she said he often jumps into “defense mode” and treats simple statements as attacks. She cited a recent argument over a faucet that had lost pressure. She also said he used to be “really bad” verbally abusive and that she began defending herself, which only made him escalate. “It’s just tiring to constantly be yelled at,” she wrote.
Commenters offered differing views. One user said the exchange wasn’t normal: “My husband and I have NEVER spoken to one another this way. You speak to him just as inappropriately.”
Another commenter, who wrote that they did not know the couple’s situation, said “there is such a thing as reactive abuse,” in which years of mistreatment leave defensive outbursts as the only way to cope. They said that is why they left and did “a lot of therapy,” and that the behavior has not recurred.
A third commenter described a similar experience. “It truly made me feel crazy to suddenly be a person who yelled,” they wrote, adding that they hadn’t “suddenly” become a yeller. They had “just finally started yelling after 10+ years of being yelled at and never, ever heard.” Therapy, they said, helped them see how it had built up.
A fourth commenter wrote that what the husband said was “out of line, of course,” but that the poster was “also being pretty mean to him.” They added that the way she described it “really reads like this is something you do regularly,” and concluded that both spouses “need to find better ways to communicate.”
The poster did not say whether she decided to let the argument go before her husband’s day off. Of her husband’s past behavior, she wrote in her edit: “we got past that stuff… or so I thought.”
The Daily Dot was unable to independently verify the details of this post, which reflect only the account shared by u/Pale_Mushroom_911 on r/GirlDinnerDiaries. If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or visit thehotline.org.
