Each person has a different threshold for social interaction.

In today’s story, a man shares how his wife can socialize all day, watch an action movie, and still want to talk before bed, but he needs quiet time to wind down.

She took his need for silence personally, and now he’s asking the internet if he did something wrong.

Let’s read the whole story and the comments.

AITA for asking for some time in my brain?

I am 39m and my wife Cookie is 38f. We’ve been together for ten years.

The background to this story is that Cookie is something of a chatty Cathy. She always has been.

She is not particularly great at staying on topic for her stories, which I honestly find endearing most of the time.

The problem is that her mother is a little bit of a bully about how much she talks, under the guise of “teasing” or “joking” of course, so Cookie is sensitive about it.

(Her mother lives 2500 miles away these days but the scars of adolescence take years to heal)

Yesterday she had a work event, and then came home a little later than usual and told me about it.

She could talk about it for hours…

Then we watched a (very intense, I guess that’s important) TV show, and that’s usually time for bed.

She brushes teeth first and I clean up the living room and kitchen (and sometimes eat a bowl of cereal) and then we sleep.

But last night, she sat in the living room for fifteen minutes and kept talking about her event while I put away dishes.

It was not anything important, I swear, it was often just a minute-by-minute readout of what had happened.

He wanted to clear his head.

So I said ‘hey, I kinda want some time inside my own head, can we finish talking about this tomorrow?’

And she is, according to the text I just got, now, eighteen hours later, still very mad about that.

She dropped “I heard it my whole life from my mom and now it’s my husband too” and “it’s fine I won’t tell stories anymore” etc etc.

I want to be understanding, but I also think it’s valid for me to want quiet time with my own thoughts, especially right before bed and ESPECIALLY after an hour of this storytelling before an hour of very action-packed TV.

So I don’t know if I said something wrong, or if she’s overreacting, but the worst thing you can do to a person who’s overreacting is tell them that they’re overreacting.

I’m just confused and frustrated.

AITA?

Yap around and find out!

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this.

Exactly.

I don’t think it’s that serious.

This is sound advice.

More good advice.

Communication is key!

He could have phrased it more nicely.

But the real issue was probably how her mom made her feel about something so harmless.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.