February 3, 2025 at 7:15 pm

His Wife Threw Him A Party After He Beat Cancer, But He Ended Up Walking Out Instead Of Sticking Around

by Matthew Gilligan

Source: Shutterstock/Reddit

Here’s a life tip for you: if someone says they don’t want a party for a certain occasion, don’t do it!

All it’s gonna do is lead to hard feelings.

The guy you’re about to hear from told his wife he didn’t want a party to celebrate his beating cancer, but she just wouldn’t listen…so he decided to show his displeasure.

Was he wrong?

Let’s see what’s going on here…

AITA for leaving my party for beating cancer?

“I (35M) am a very private person.

I have no social media, don’t want my wife (32F) posting photos of me, although I don’t tell her not to, just don’t ask her to post me.

Celebrating Father’s Day or my birthday, I don’t like attention on me and prefer to keep things low key whenever I can.

So, keeping that in mind, I was diagnosed with an extremely curable type of skin cancer.

It was caught very early on and I never felt scared for my life in any way, shape or form.

I’m an engineer and I think analytically and wasn’t scared with a diagnosis with a 0.03% fatality rate.

Still, I told my wife of course, and she was terrified.

We talked through it and told her my doctor was very optimistic and said we have caught it early on, etc.

None of it seemed to help, but I tried.

He wanted to keep it quiet.

After a while, I told her that we shouldn’t tell our kids, 5F and 7F.

My wife wanted to tell them, but I was adamant about that, I’m not even sure they would understand what we’re talking about.

Reluctantly, she agreed not to.

Uh oh…

About a week later, I get a call from my dad…..asking about my cancer.

Turns out, my wife posted on FB about my cancer that morning.

I called her and wasn’t happy that she posted my business and his behind the “You didn’t say I couldn’t post it, just not to tell the kids” excuse.

There is no way she would think I wanted that posted online, no matter what I said.

So, she took it down and time went by.

Very quickly, I was in remission with my skin cancer and my doctor told me, word for word, “We don’t like to say you’re ‘cured’, but, you’re cured.

I told my wife and she was ecstatic.

She told me she was worried all this time (I could tell) and glad we put this all behind us.

I thought we could put this all behind us too….

She wasn’t getting the message…

This weekend, I’m coming home on Friday.

I see a lot of cars parked on the street, some in my driveway.

I couldn’t think of any birthdays or anniversaries I missed, but went in anyway…… It was a party for my remission diagnosis.

I was mortified at this, she’s never done anything like this and we’ve talked about how I wouldn’t like a surprise party multiple times.

I asked what this is for a said “I’m sorry, but I didn’t know you planned this, I’m just coming back for some files and heading back to work”.

It was a lie.

I gathered up some meaningless files in my office and said thanks to everyone for coming and left to go back to my office, messing around on my phone until everyone left.

My wife knew I was lying and we fought that night.

I told her I don’t know what’s gotten into her, but she knows I would never want this and she doesn’t get to make a big deal out of something personal I never wanted to be public in the first place.

We’ve been cold this whole week and my brother said I’m a jerk since I told him I just pretended to go to work.

So, AITA for not wanting to celebrate beating my cancer?”

Here’s how folks reacted on Reddit.

This person said he’s NTA.

Source: Reddit/AITA

Another individual shared their thoughts.

Source: Reddit/AITA

This reader chimed in.

Source: Reddit/AITA

Another individual weighed in.

Source: Reddit/AITA

He told her he wasn’t interested, but she didn’t listen!

They definitely need to have a serious chat.

If you liked this post, you might want to read this story about a teacher who taught the school’s administration a lesson after they made a sick kid take a final exam.