When you get married, you pledge to love and support one another in sickness and in health, for better or for worse. This means that even when things get hard, we’re there for our partners, and we work together as a team to try to get through those hard things together.

Of course, there are exceptions to this for many people. If one partner did something truly heinous, for example, it’s normal to not even want to try to rebuild a relationship – the same with serious breaches of trust. But if you truly love someone, as you would hope that someone getting married does, following the vow to love and support one another can lead to the really strong, everlasting relationship that most people dream of.

For the couple in this story, however, things have been tricky for a while. Brain surgery left the wife experiencing serious personality changes, to the extent that her friends and loved ones were quite distressed. Nevertheless, she and her husband worked through things, with their relationship getting stronger with each obstacle that they overcame, and a deep loving bond remaining between them.

However, others don’t react to her behaviour in such a similarly loving and accepting way – this is something that both partners are quite aware of. So when an intense social situation came up, the husband was left in deep turmoil about whether or not his wife should attend.

Read on to find out why.

AITA for not wanting to take my wife to a work function?

I love my wife, and we have a really good relationship. We have a very deep and long time friendship, and have enjoyed each other’s company for quite some time.

However, it is as if I’ve been married to two different women: one of them before her craniotomy and another one after.

Before her craniotomy, she was fun-loving, had a great sense of humour, was the life of the party, and had a wonderful circle of friends. Afterwards, it affected her personality. She became argumentative, annoyed at the world, and struggled in social situations.

When some of her friends visited a couple of weeks post surgery, they pulled me aside and in hushed tones told me they couldn’t believe that was really her.

Let’s understand the situation that this couple are in now.

Fast forward to now. She has gone through a lot of cognitive therapy to be able to help her get back to where she was prior to surgery.

She worked very hard on her masters degree and ended up finishing a doctorate as her terminal degree, as well as putting in several years of research on her subject.

In light of all of that though, there are some personality problems that remain. Chiefly, she gets agitated very easily, lashes out when she’s frustrated, and raises her voice quite a bit out of anger.

I love her to death, and I have adjusted to and worked around a lot of these problems. We have talked them out together and are in a very good place with each other.

But he’s concerned that others might not be so understanding and empathetic.

There’s going to be a work function this weekend with a lot of my colleagues there.

There are going to be a lot of things there that will trigger her agitation and frustration. It’s going to be loud, outside, in the heat, with a large crowd of people.

I don’t want to put her in a position where she will end up feeling bad about herself.

Am I wrong for not bringing her to a work function because I am afraid of how she will react to people and be perceived by my colleagues?

AITA?

It’s clear that this guy is not embarrassed by his wife, he’s actually incredibly proud of her.

But he’s also concerned about how she will be perceived – both for her sake, and for the sake of his colleagues.

It’s a tricky situation, but one that primarily, he needs to talk about with her.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a woman’s family who is trying to stop her from moving away for her husband’s job.

Let’s see what folks on Reddit made of this.

This person agreed that he should discuss this with his wife.

While others just encouraged him not to make the decision for her.

Meanwhile, this Redditor was confused about his motives.

Let’s be real: this couple have been through some really tough things together, and it’s clear that the love between them is strong. They’ve worked heard on her rehabilitation, and are accepting of the fact that – as a result of the surgery – the wife’s personality and capacity to emotionally regulate has been somewhat hampered. That really isn’t her fault.

When we’re suffering with mental or emotional struggles, it can be tempting to avoid the things that we know trigger us. For example, if you know that you are triggered by busy environments, you might choose to avoid parties and concerts, or even shopping malls or sporting events because you don’t want to deal with the difficult emotions and panic they might bring up.

The logic there is sound, but it’s up to the person whether or not they want their life limited in that way, or whether – with the support of loved ones and the use of coping mechanisms – they just want to do the hard thing anyway.

So in the case of this party, he’s not wrong for not wanting to attend with his wife. After all, he knows that she will find it triggering, and that her colleagues may get the wrong impression of this person that he so deeply loves. But in the end, while it’s his choice whether or not he attends, he shouldn’t be making the decision for her. In this, as in everything, they need to be a team.