A supportive partner knows when to offer encouragement and when to simply zip it.

One man thought he was easing his wife’s worries about her career panel outfit, but his comments ended up making everything worse.

Read on for the full story.

AITA My [28M] Wife [27F] Got Offended While I Was Trying to Reassure Her

This morning, my wife was getting dressed to go speak at a career panel at her old high school.

She was panicking about what to wear.

She asked me to use a Tide bleach pen on a white blazer to get a stain out, which I did, but then she realized it looked too “ostentatious” and decided against it.

So she settled on a different outfit.

Then she realized she didn’t have anything except a grey blazer, black dress pants, and a green top.

When she came downstairs to show me her outfit, I enthusiastically told her that she looked good, but she wasn’t convinced and said that the pants and blazer didn’t match very well.

But here’s where things got dicey.

I tried to compliment her again, but she asked me not to lie to her.

I tried to be as constructive as possible and said, “Don’t worry, we can look into getting you matching pants and blazers soon,” which I think went over well.

Then I made her a coffee, and she started to leave.

Then came one last twist of the knife, so to speak.

But as she was walking out the door, I told her, “Remember, they’re there for what you say, not for how you look.”

She just stared at me like I had cut her with a knife.

It’s clear his wife was hurt by his words.

As she was walking to her car, she turned and said, “Geez, I didn’t think I looked THAT bad…” and walked away.

I tried to clarify, but she wasn’t having any of it.

Now he’s left scratching his head.

I was just trying to reassure her that the students wouldn’t judge her for her clothes (a tad wishful, I suppose) and would only care about what she had to say, but it appears my message was lost.

AITA?

When your reassurance ends up making the other person feel worse, you know you did something wrong.

What did Reddit think?

It’s easy to say the wrong thing in a relationship, but there are ways to get back on track.

It’s clear the wife took something different from her husband’s reassurance.

This user acknowledge’s that the wife’s stress levels were higher than normal, which made things more highly charged.

Disaster struck when the wrong words met the wrong time.

It seems no amount of backtracking could fix the disaster that had been created.

Sometimes it’s best to know when to shut your mouth.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.