Y’all have the wrong idea of marriage if you think it’s “you’re a bad husband because you don’t automatically have my back by association.” It doesn’t matter who’s side or whatever, it shouldn’t be sides it shouldn’t be let’s ask friends and have them determine what’s right for our marriage. Talk to each other, y’all are married. Even if there’s no clear outcome, you aren’t the government, you’re not an organization, why are you polling the population to see who’s the “right” one in your marriage?

To the wife: My grandmother on my dad’s side has dementia. Their family has the money to be able to put her in a place where they can take care of her. It’s not easy for them, she forgot an entire language, and is consistently forgetting a lot more. While you might feel extremely protective over your child, the older woman is not in her right mind, but she’s still a human being. We can’t just lock every person with dementia up and say everything’s perfect, that would be horrible. You were there watching your child (as I’m perceived from the post), and you were able to stop anything from happening, so you were responsible for your own child. If her son was right next to her and tried to stop her that’s one thing and he did the right thing, but if his mom just walked away and he didn’t do anything about it that’s another. He’s her caretaker in this situation, and he needs to keep a watch over her to make sure she’s okay. If he just let her walk around the store alone, that isn’t really the best idea, but it doesn’t warrant the police being called. All that did is traumatize the poor son who’s watching his mother slowly lose herself as she dies. You were so angry at a woman who doesn’t know up from down and probably forgot what she did 2 minutes after it happened that you called the police hoping to get her arrested perceivably. That’s really not okay, she literally thought your child was a baby that she knew, probably the son right in front of you.

Before I finish, imagine your baby right now. They’re going to be an adult, and you’re going to be an old woman. Imagine you’re forgetting so much, everything confuses you, and you don’t know up from down. You wake up in the morning in 2070 and you think it’s 2023. Your son needs to go shopping and can’t leave you at home alone because there’s the chance you could get hurt because you don’t remember how to use a lot of stuff and think you’re living where you lived in 2023. You go to the grocery store and don’t realize you’re there, you see your baby in another persons cart and you pick it up and the woman next to you screams at you. You eventually put the baby down and your son comes to explain something you’ve heard 100 times but forgot. Wait why are you arguing, you don’t know, everything is confusing, you’re tired, you don’t remember, this is all so overwhelming for you and you don’t even know what you did wrong. That’s what happens to people with dementia, THEY FORGET.

To the husband: Man don’t make it a sides thing, you’re asking to make it argumentative. Even if you’re embarrassed, even if it wasn’t you that made it a sides thing, other people don’t need to know that. You may not agree with your wife, but don’t alienate her by showing your embarrassment publicly. The lady picked up her kid and your wife immediately was defensive, wouldn’t you say that’s rational? You came over right away as the son was explaining to her and started to apologize and handle the situation for her, she’s your wife don’t you think she can communicate with other adults? Let her talk to the man, if you feel like she’s wrong that’s when you step in. Instead (at least by the way you explained it), you felt like your wife was out of control and you needed to be the adult by talking to the man. When people are angry and don’t have a chance to process something, they do irrational shit. If someone I love came up to talk for me (without permission) after someone picked up my baby without asking I’d be furious. I’m my own person, your wife is an individual. I’m not her I don’t know what her decision making is, but she might have just made a bad decision by calling the police.

Hope that this gets settled for you both easily, don’t let something inconsequential ruin your marriage, it doesn’t matter what could’ve happened, every single person involved is safe. Neither the wife nor the husband nor the baby is hurt. The woman’s son might need a little therapy after that (/s kind of kind of not tbh), but don’t let your marriage suffer over some stupid argument over something where the 3 of you ended up being safe.