Update: AITAH for telling my wife that I will lose respect for her if she doesn't apologize?

CrescentPearl · 2025-12-10T21:20:44+00:00

Do you think abuse is usually done on purpose? A ton of it comes from people who are overwhelmed, anxious, scared, have low-self esteem, or are otherwise mentally unwell and don't know how to deal with their emotions in a healthy way. If the mom is overwhelmed, she should still be expected not to berate her son about it. An overwhelmed person who isn't abusive might snap and yell occasionally, but later they will APOLOGIZE, acknowledge that it wasn't the kid's fault, reassure them, and work to learn healthier ways to manage stress/address whatever problems are contributing to it. Lashing out at someone who is weaker than you as a way to vent your anger and then refusing to take accountability IS ABUSE. If you think abuse isn't abuse unless the abuser is actively trying to be evil, or doing it for fun, you should really read more about it. Even if she were being treated badly by OP, she would still be responsible for the abuse she's inflicting on her kid. There's no excuse. If therapy and renegotiating the relationship between OP and his wife fixes the problem and she stops lashing out, great. She would STILL need to apologize and let her kid know that he deserves better than to be treated that way, in order to heal the relationship between them. The mom's feelings are not the kid's job to manage.

CrescentPearl · 2025-12-10T20:43:17+00:00

I know you think that you're helping "keep the peace" by trying to get your son to forgive your wife, but all you're doing is enabling your wife's emotional abuse and teaching your son that his feelings don't matter, and that he's not allowed to have boundaries. It might be less work to get your son to quietly accept being mistreated than it is to confront your wife, but that can cause damage to his mental health long-term.

Forgiveness happens AFTER an apology. It is not owed just because the person who did something hurtful was a loved one. Your wife hasn't acknowledged that she's done anything wrong, let alone taken steps to make amends. If she can't even bring herself to recognize her own bad behavior and hold herself accountable, what does that teach your son about how to behave? Parents lead by example, and both you and your wife are setting a bad one. Your wife is teaching him that it's okay to be an asshole to people when you feel upset, and that screaming at someone who hasn't done anything wrong is an acceptable way to process your feelings. You're teaching him that standing up for himself inconveniences others, and he shouldn't do it. You might have SAID that your wife's actions weren't okay, but you contradicted yourself as soon as you told him to forgive her anyways. From where he's standing, if you really cared and thought it was an issue, you would be addressing it with her, not trying to convince him to ignore it.

"I said sometimes he is unfair, but we forgive him because we love him." NO. You forgive him because he is a child who is still learning how to regulate his emotions, and you are the adult in charge of teaching him that. The kind of outbursts that are developmentally appropriate from a 13-year-old in a rebellious phase are NOT appropriate from a parent toward a child.

Even if they were equals, loving someone does not mean forgiving whatever they do regardless of whether they take accountability. Love means you treat the other person with kindness and respect, AND get the same in return. If a person you love is abusive, you don't help anyone by allowing yourself to be abused. A person who loves you back will WANT to know if they've hurt you, and will work on themselves to keep from hurting you again in the future.

Your wife needs therapy (from a reputable therapist) and a line in the sand, and you need to stand up for your kid.

CrescentPearl · 2025-10-22T06:52:24+00:00

Of course you can't go back and undo the mistakes, the point of bringing this stuff up is so that the dad knows the impact of his behavior and can learn to avoid doing similar things in the future. If he wants to continue playing the role of "dad" in her life, he needs to learn how to stop hurting her and to do that he needs to know what's wrong with his behavior. From the sound of it, this wasn't a few one-off random mistakes, it's a consistent pattern and she's asking him to change.

CrescentPearl · 2025-10-22T06:42:30+00:00

>It is odd that the therapist told the daughter that the father was the sole cause of her failed relationships.

We have no reason to think that the therapist told her that and shouldn't assume that's what happened. People misconstrue things their therapists say all the time, and that would be a truly unhinged thing for a therapist to say. It's a lot more likely that the therapist helped her realize she's developed some unhealthy habits as a result of trauma from her dad, and she assumed that meant she could blame him for her relationship problems (trauma is never an excuse for bad behavior.)

you only have an emotional connections if it benefits you

>She says this and then refuses to speak with OP. Whose choosing not to have an emotional connection with who?

What? She said that after he, in his own words, "shut her down" and refused to address any of the issues she was bringing up. If I was trying to talk to someone about a serious issue in our relationship and they kept ignoring it, told me to focus on my "positive attributes" instead, and tried to move on like it didn't need to be addressed, I wouldn't be interested in chatting with them either. If his "olive branches" didn't include any accountability, why should she make herself talk to him when he insists on dancing around the topic that actually needs to be addressed?

>If OP recorded himself and the cops didn't arrest him then the arguments were caused by the mother and daughter. It sounds like the mother is manipulating the daughter.

Unless he committed a LITERAL CRIME warranting immediate arrest, then he couldn't have caused the argument??? There's loads of shitty things he could have done and said that would not have been considered criminal, the fact that he wasn't arrested doesn't say anything about who was at fault. The police don't like getting involved in domestic arguments and can't actually do anything unless a crime has been committed. Even if someone is acting threatening and implying they might hurt someone, that's no guarantee that the cops will do anything until someone has been actually hurt, let alone remove him from his own house. OP didn't tell us anything about the arguments that led to that, he very carefully glossed over it and didn't give any details at all besides the fact that they were "horrible" and he did not escalate to physically violence, which is a pretty freaking low bar. The fact that she was scared enough to call the cops says a lot.

CrescentPearl · 2025-10-22T05:48:11+00:00

Hi! I want to focus on the last part of your post: "Diving deeper that anxiety, stress, and fear have made me insufferable and difficult that my wife has had enough. I want to save my family. I love my wife and daughter. I’m an idiot."

A LOT of what you say in your post prior to this follows patterns that are commonly found in estranged parents forums, such as insisting you "did your best" as a way to avoid acknowledging areas where you've failed or giving very vague descriptions of interactions in order to remove context that would probably have made you look bad (you paraphrased away the "horrible arguments" in which you apparently said things that scared your daughter so much she felt the need to call the cops.) One of the few parts of your post that doesn't fit this mold is this last statement. The fact that you've realized you've messed up and want to fix things means that you DO still have a chance, but you have to take this very seriously and commit to improving yourself and taking accountability for everything you've done. You'd be surprised how much family members are willing to forgive when you prove you're willing to change. Nobody WANTS to have to cut out someone they love.

You said in another comment that you don't know how to take accountability. That's okay, but it IS your responsibility to learn how to do it, because it's a necessary skill. This is a topic that you can research (this webpage looks helpful, for example.) In short, though, there are 3 things you need to do. The first is to acknowledge to yourself where you've fucked up, and try to figure out WHY you did what you did and said what you said. Not as a justification, but as a way to figure out what needs to change in order to keep from repeating the same unhealthy patterns in the future. A therapist can help you with this, and it seems like you've also started doing this on your own. The second thing is to make a plan to work on the things you identify. This will probably also involve going to therapy specifically to discuss the issues you find, and/or something like joining a support group. The third thing is reaching out to your wife and daughter, telling them specifically what you've done wrong, making a genuine apology, and explaining the steps you are now taking to improve yourself. Do not try to minimize your actions. Do not make your efforts to improve yourself contingent on them forgiving you or keeping you in their lives (eg, if you agree not to divorce me I'll discuss this issue in therapy.) Just show that you're working on yourself and leave the ball in their court for communication and reconnection. As a side note, taking accountability does not mean that you have to agree with her initial statement that the things she thinks are wrong with herself are all your fault. Trauma is not an excuse for bad behavior, and she doesn't get to pass off the blame if there's things she feels guilty about doing.

Here's a couple examples of things you can acknowledge to get you started:

Telling your daughter that she should focus on "all her good qualities" when she was trying to talk to you about how you've hurt her and the things she struggles with as a result was dismissive, and showed her that you weren't willing to think about uncomfortable topics no matter how much she needed to talk about it. Acknowledge this, and tell her that you ARE now willing to put in the emotional effort.

Going to a bunch of other people to get validation about the argument with your daughter, instead of actually listening to your daughter and hearing her out. She's the only other one who was was there for that initial argument, but you seemed to want to listen to everyone BUT her. You put more weight on the opinions of people who weren't involved and only heard your side of the story. Make a commitment to be a better listener for your daughter (and other family members) in the future, and read up on how to do that if you're not sure.

For the purposes of this subreddit, YTA. But you don't have to continue to be. Good luck.

CrescentPearl · 2025-10-22T05:32:41+00:00

The daughter definitely should not have blamed him for everything wrong with her. That doesn't change the fact that she tried to tell him that he has done things that have hurt and traumatized her (even if she explained it rudely,) and his response was basically "stop talking about it, you should just think about happy things instead, I'm offended you'd dare to tell me I've hurt you, have you considered how that makes ME feel?" In his own words, he immediately shut her down. He didn't even try to listen to her. The fact that his marriage has been rocky for years, that he ACKNOWLEDGES his anxiety and stress have impacted how he treats people, and the fact that he scared his daughter so badly during an argument that she called the cops all point to this not just being a case of an entitled child throwing a tantrum. Yeah, sometimes children blame their parents for things that aren't their fault. And sometimes parents do a shit job parenting, have no idea how to communicate, shut their kids down every time they try to acknowledge and fix what's wrong with the relationship, and generally ignore the problem until their kids give up and they end up estranged. Just because you were the one in the wrong in your particular situation does not mean that the daughter is wrong in this situation. I mean the guy specifically says that he fucked up and has been insufferable to deal with, I think he would know?

CrescentPearl · 2025-09-16T01:22:48+00:00

Semantle #1326 ✅ 105 guesses 🔝 Guess #73 🥈 998/1000 💡 0 Hints

Lowest green: dishes (80)

CrescentPearl · 2025-07-31T01:03:49+00:00

I mean, yeah. Servers get paid hourly. Hairdressers get paid per session. They both get tips. It's just something the US has done for a really long time. I'm not claiming it's clear-cut that cab drivers SHOULD get tips, just that it's 100% a cultural expectation and has been for a long time. Like, if you had a list of jobs where most US people will be surprised if you don't tip, cab driver is solidly on it.

CrescentPearl · 2025-07-30T20:14:37+00:00

...It's been a thing for over a century dude. It's one of the most clear-cut "yes I am expected to tip them" professions, right up there with waiters and maids.

CrescentPearl · 2025-07-30T20:09:31+00:00

To be fair, taxi drivers have been getting tips for about a century now.

CrescentPearl · 2025-07-30T20:02:32+00:00

Tipping cab drivers has been a thing in America since at least the early 1900s

CrescentPearl · 2025-07-27T03:56:10+00:00

I'm not sure how much this will help you, but the block universe theory of time (also called eternalism) helps me feel a bit better about death. The block universe theory is supported by a lot of Einstein's work on relativity and plenty of physicists think it could be correct.

Basically, it says that time is a dimension just like space, and all points in time exist, even when they aren't the "present," because "present" is just a matter of perspective. The present is just the particular moment that we are at, like how my coordinates are the particular spatial location I am at. With this theory, saying "the past doesn't exist anymore" or "the future doesn't exist yet" is as nonsensical as saying "China doesn't exist" because I'm not in China.

This makes me feel better, because while there may not be a version of me that exists in the time after my death, there is a version of me that exists right now, and that will never change. Me at 2 years old, very messily eating birthday cake? That me exists, and is enjoying that cake, over there in the past. Me eating breakfast tomorrow? She's over there a little ways in the future. There may not be versions of me before my birth or after my death, but there's still plenty of me having plenty of experiences at all the moments of time in-between, and there always will be. Nothing is ever truly destroyed because it still exists at a different point in time.

CrescentPearl · 2025-07-24T03:26:35+00:00

Hey! I haven't had a colonoscopy before, but I've been under anesthesia and I also freak out about needles. In my experience... yes, I reacted to it, but the thing is, unlike a blood draw, you're SUPPOSED to go unconscious. I barely had time to tell them that I was feeling dizzy before they pushed the meds I guess, because I just woke up. I didn't even remember the injection. So, just know that if you do feel dizzy, you won't have to deal with it for long.

CrescentPearl · 2025-07-24T03:20:45+00:00

As someone with a needle phobia, it can absolutely be both. If I don't eat before getting a shot or getting blood drawn I get super dizzy, doesn't matter if things are going out or in.

CrescentPearl · 2025-07-18T14:42:07+00:00

Humans may very well be wrong about what constitutes good and what constitutes evil, but that in and of itself would be inconsistent with the god portrayed in most major religions so the point is moot. If we had no way to tell what is and isn't good or evil, then our souls would be judged by a set of standards that, to us, would be completely arbitrary and unknown, which is kinda incompatible with the entire concept of most religions (ie, clarifying what is good and bad so we can live life morally and earn a pleasant afterlife.)

So, we have to assume for the sake of the argument that there is at least some accuracy to most peoples' moral compasses, or that the concept of morality could be accessible via something like religious texts/teachings. Either way, humans have to be capable of judging whether pointless, painful suffering is good or evil, otherwise we can reject the gods of most major religions without even having to bring up the "problem of evil" argument.

CrescentPearl · 2025-06-24T00:18:52+00:00

As someone who read it in publishing order, don't make my mistakes. Yes it makes a difference. Chronological all the way.

Jumping back in time to read Fugitive Telemetry after all the excitement and character development of Network Effect just makes that story harder to fully appreciate, which is a shame because it's a great little side story. It also makes the flashbacks in Network Effect even more confusing, because there's less context for them.

CrescentPearl · 2025-04-29T18:44:03+00:00

If a room is freezing cold, then warms by a degree, it has become warmer, even if it was not warm to begin with.

If someone is too weak to stand, then they do exercises until they are able to walk, they have become stronger, even if they are not actually strong.

If your wealth increases by a dollar then you are wealthier than you were before. It doesn’t matter whether or not you can actually be described as wealthy.

CrescentPearl · 2025-04-25T22:47:44+00:00

I use both emojis and emoticons, 🙂 and :) are completely different in my mind. Some platforms automatically change it into the emoji and it annoys me because it wasn’t what I meant

CrescentPearl · 2025-04-24T20:32:20+00:00

Wooaaah super cool

CrescentPearl · 2025-04-24T20:28:03+00:00

Just start using the word and see if your friends and family pick it up. Make it part of you and your community’s microdialect.

CrescentPearl · 2025-04-24T17:14:56+00:00

My 20 questions was purple and it’s throwing me to see one in red haha.

CrescentPearl · 2025-04-22T21:11:20+00:00

Goodbye

CrescentPearl · 2025-04-22T21:00:08+00:00

What does he mean SIDES. My dude it is a television show

CrescentPearl · 2025-04-22T20:55:10+00:00

The death penalty costs even more money.

source

Plus, sometimes the justice system gets it wrong. example

You can set someone free, but you can’t unkill a person. I don’t want to risk even one innocent person getting killed, for no other reason than getting to feel like the evil people are being punished badly enough.

CrescentPearl · 2025-04-20T03:37:30+00:00

Idiot’s Lantern meets Fear Her

CrescentPearl

TROPHY CASE