There is not a single doubt in the world that cancer sucks. Those who have to battle it firsthand know this better than anyone, and also that the effects aren’t always physical.
OP knows that his wife’s battle includes mental health, but he’s still not willing to give her a pass for what she pulled with their daughter.
His wife’s cancer is extremely beatable, but she still has to undergo chemotherapy. That means she’s losing her hair, a fact that understandably upset her.
My wife is currently battling cancer, and one of the things she’s told me she’s struggling with the most was losing her hair.
She’s been given a near 100% chance of survival since we caught it early, but the chemotherapy has destroyed her hair anyway, and she had to shave what was left of it off a few weeks ago.
When she brought up the idea of her daughter shaving her head in solidarity, OP suspected their teenager would not be behind it. She has pretty, long hair that she spends time taking care of, and when her dad asked her about it privately, she confessed she did not want to shave her head.
Not long after that, she suggested we attempt to get our 17 year old daughter, Anna, to do so as well. Anna has very long hair that she puts a lot of care into so I felt it was appropriate to ask her in private if she wanted to/would be willing to do such a thing.
She told me that she didn’t want to cut her hair and I figured that was the end of that.
So, when they came back from a shopping trip and his daughter had a shaved head, he questioned it – and found out her mother had heavily guilted her into it.
However yesterday they came home from a “girls shopping trip”, something they do every so often, and Anna had a buzzed haircut. That struck me as odd after what she’d said, so after dinner I talked to her and she told me that my wife had said she would never forgive Anna if she didn’t show her support by buzzing her head.
I asked her if she was happy about it and she said that she wasn’t.
When I went to bed, I brought it up with my wife and she said “it was Anna’s choice to or not, I just told her how I’d see the situation.”
I told her off, saying she needed to respect Anna’s personal choices and that a 17 year old girl being against shaving her head wasn’t exactly out of the ordinary, however my wife simply said it was to show support for her.
He’s extremely angry with his wife, who doesn’t think she did anything wrong.
I’ve been sleeping on the couch since. I love my wife, and I understand that she’s going through something traumatic, however her attitude comes off as very manipulative to me, and that’s not behavior I feel I can personally accept. I’m not sure if I can move past this to continue the relationship.
AITA?
Is he making too much of it? Should he give her more grace?
Reddit is about to throw down a judgement!
The top comment called OP’s wife out for being abusive.
This person agrees, and also says they would have a hard time forgiving the behavior.
And this commenter doesn’t mince words.
They say it was a gross breach of trust.
Image Credit: Reddit
I hate this, honestly.
Like the family wasn’t having a hard enough time the way it was.