Not OOP: wibta for divorcing my wife because she couldn’t handle me crying in front of her
Am I...100% agree.
I think you can't say this kind of stuff without directly addressing the issue of crying somehow being a gendered thing. If the genders were reversed and it was the wife crying, OOPs account wouldn't even exist and we wouldn't even be having this discussion.
For some reason crying is seen as non masculine and genuinely break relationships. I've seen it irl and on tons of posts on social media. Toxic masculinity is not only perpetuated by men. Poor OOP, I don't think his relationship recovers and it shouldnt either. He needs to get out.
Hard same.
That’s the first thing I thought, first of all he’s just shown he’s human and whenever I see my partner cry I just wanna comfort and love on him I feel so bad for OP
It's the line about "crying over kids that have nothing to do with me" that broke me most. She is blatantly telling you OOP that she doesnt have empathy. Couples counseling isn't going to help her gain empathy. Not only is this a disgusting way to treat your spouse but it's a monstrous view of the world. OOP needs to get the fuck out of there asap, she is deeply unhealthy and needs serious therapy to address her lack of emotion and empathy.
Man I cried my eyes out when I read about that poor little 18 month old girl that died a long, slow death when her mother literally packed her bags, partied in another country and left her toddler alone for 10 days without food or water.
Just writing that now brings tears to my eyes. I can’t fathom it. I want to rip laws of time and reality and somehow go back in time and save that little girl. That story fucked me up.
I can’t understand people with no empathy. It’s inhuman.
This story absolutely broke me. She tried to eat her own poop. I’ve sobbed about it several times. I’ve noticed since I had my own kids, these stories affect me more because I always picture them in those situations. It’s the most prominent manifestation of my anxiety. Like a thought hamster wheel I can’t get off of.
Anyhow, it doesn’t sound like OP has children, and I hope he doesn’t with this woman, just sounds like he is an empathetic person and she is not. It’s sad he found that out after marrying her.
It’s not just a lack of empathy. I have multiple autistic friends who are low/no empathy, but who have a ton of compassion and would comfort or support OOP in their own ways.
You don’t need empathy to be a good person. However, OOP’s wife has an utter disregard for other human beings and that’s fucked
This really can’t be upvoted enough. The OOP really really needs to get out of that relationship and for the love of god, he needs to never ever have children with this woman. She is not right.
Basically, the wife is admitting that she would sit by and let a genocide happen as long as they didn't come after her.
I can't imagine going to that prison. Just going to the Holocaust museum gets me insanely choked up, and I know if I ever go to one of the camps, I'll lose it.
Yeah, same. OOP’s wife is lacking humanity in a pretty horrific way. Like it doesn’t register on her scale. I’d say she may be a sociopath? But not a psychiatrist. I just think that her elevator doesn’t stop at the standard floors.
I'd even say this is a situation that justifies warning your ex's new partners about her. Unless she fixes her behavior she shouldn't be in such deep relationships, it will get someone hurt.
Right? Like I don't always cry outwardly (Reactions that strong are unpredictable and often fear-based, but I've also done the crying at movies thing, and when I do cry it's powerful and ugly and gross.) but I still feel bad when I hear about bad things happening. I wouldn't shame somebody else for crying if I didn't, like fuck. That's unstable behavior. Especially how she tried to make him out to be a bad person for it? What the hell?
Yeah, woman is a high functioning sociopath. Not to say they can't be socialized into being good people, but given her age I doubt she'd have any chance of it. Even a person who doesn't feel bad from seeing those things can sometimes understand on a cognitive level why another person would and wouldn't criticize them for a normal reaction to an atrocity. She is unreasonable and not that smart imo. Also not sure why she thinks it's norm to treat this atrocity like nothing just because she thinks "worse" things happened historically. Like, tell that to the kids watching the other kids get massacres ans their turn is next - "Why are you crying? This isn't as bad as blahblah."
Yea that made her sound like a psychopath especially in some place as visceral as S21. If you haven’t seen pictures Google it they really did not try to gussy it up, it’s full of pictures of the people who were imprisoned there, representations of the torture they went through, and the written history of the prison broken down by each space including the “killing tree” where they killed hundreds if not thousands of children. 18,000 people died at that prison and Khmer Rouge took pictures of them all, and there were only about 12 survivors.
Empathy is not caring about other people, it's the sense of being able to tell what someone (of your same neurotype) is feeling without being told/other tells, like your sense of balance, or taste. It has nothing to do with how much your care, logically or emotionally- and anyone who bases how much they care solely on whether they are feeling empathy is a terrible person, especially since it's literally impossible to feel empathy for someone of a different neurotype. The idea of certain groups of people "not having empathy" is used and has been used for a very long time to dehumanize to point of violence and genocide. Do not vilify "not having empathy". Regardless of what you meant by that you're causing harm and inadvertently spreading disinfo.
what do you mean "without being told/other tells"? body language, facial expression, tone of voice, previous knowledge of the person and overall context are all tells. i'm autistic and use those things when empathizing with other autistic people, and i know the neurotypical do the same.
I hate screaming divorce in response to this. But dudes gotta serve the papers immediately.
Women like this are just as bad as men who objectify women as homemakers or objects of sexual desire. That’s what she’s doing to OP here, just in a different way. She’s objectifying him as a provider, a source of security, but she doesn’t see him as a person.
definitely a good point that toxic masculinity doesn’t only effect how feminine gender roles are viewed, but masculine ones as well.
sensitivity is a gift.
Yeah, she should consider herself lucky she found a guy with empathy but no, she ruined it.
I don’t think toxic masculinity is the issue at play here, at least not in the way most would assume when seeing that phrase. I’m glad you touched on it though.
Toxic masculinity is often positioned as problematic stereotypical male behaviours in so as they relate to interactions with both women and other men. Rarely is it used to comment on how society’s stereotypical expectations of men often cause women to view men’s emotions in a stereotypical way with negative connotation. Some feminists are starting to write on this topic, and I applaud them for it, since then men who have brought it up publicly have been ignored in the past or even worse branded as misogynists.
She wants to enforce toxic masculinity on him, that's the crux of the entire problem. She is the kind of would -be-mother that make toxic men.
Also known as a misandrist
toxic masculinity means toxic expectations of what 'masculinity' entails. those can be enforced by men/ women/ anyone of any gender. just like sexual objectification of women can be enforced of anyone of any gender. these concepts aren't new, feminists have been speaking about them for a while now.
Agreed, that is the precise definition, but not the general understanding. I guarantee if you asked 100 random people 90% would define toxic masculinity as rooted in male attitudes and behaviour rather than societal expectations of men.
depends on the group you're surveying. people may say toxic behaviour by men, but people also may actually defend it (something that's been on the rise for these past few years, thanks to andrew tate and co.). so really depends on who you ask. as far as feminists go- the whole premise of feminism is based on how society raises men and women differently and unfairly puts them into boxes. so imo it's misleading to say that only some feminists have recently started talking abt it.
edit: typo.
Again, I’m not saying feminists aren’t doing research based on the precise definition of toxic masculinity - they are, and your analysis of they do so is spot on.
I am saying that it is only recently that feminist scholars have begun to devote large portions of their research towards toxic masculine traits in women. It is also a recent occurrence that writings on toxic masculinity as it specifically applies to women’s external view of masculinity as opposed to an internalized one. Tons of papers have been written on how internalized misogyny perpetuated by patriarchal structures affects women’s personal image, self confidence, etc.. What is not common (at least until more recently) is writing on how toxic masculinity affects women’s external image of men.
I am fairly well versed in both modern and historical feminist theory, and I have noticed that academic papers from the perspective I cited above began emerging frequently in the last 5 years. If you can point to an example of this being discussed in second or third wave feminist theory I’d gladly defer, but I haven’t been able to find one.
okay, that seems fair. i was definitely not thinking of the first two waves. tho to be fair, they were a bit more focused on basic rights rather than nuanced discussion, haha. but yeah, i think we were just operating under different definitions of 'recent'. plus i grew up w and on the internet, so i think that maybe skews my perspective a bit as online progressive circles (typically) tend to be a bit ahead of the mainstream curve on a lot of things.
Toxic femininity?
That’s usually used to refer to internalized misogyny in women. I don’t think it applies to my point so I didn’t use the term.
I disagree only because she feels nothing for the victims of the genocide. She's not criticizing him for crying because he is a man, she is criticizing his empathetic reaction because she does not have this reaction and perhaps on a subconscious level she's treat her lack of internal or external reaction as norm rather than understand even on an intellectual level that genocide across the board is horrendous and most empathetic people can comprehend the horror to some extent and feel bad because of it. If her partner were a woman, she would likely have this same response because internally she feels nothing for the victims and seeing another person being emotionally moved causes cognitive dissonance because by all means she /should/ have such a reaction but does not.
Dude’s wife is a callous, cold person severely lacking in empathy, and if I were him, I would be serving divorce papers immediately.
The fact that horrific atrocities “happen all the time” and “worse things have happened in history” should make someone feel WORSE, rather than just fine with the reality of the violence in the world.
I could never stay married to someone who acts like genocide is nbd
What worse things then bashing a three-year-olds head into a tree until they die? She is super cold.
Worse things have happened than one of the most infamously brutal genocidal massacres of all time, grow up!
People have been killing each other for stupid reasons since the dawn of time.
But Cambodia got to me, cause they didn’t even really have a reason. They just killed their own people in horrible brutal ways.
They had a reason. They were occupied by France, and exploited. When they gained their freedom, the anti-European sentiment was so strong in rural areas that the “revolutionaries” became convinced they needed to rid the country of everything European. Including education, professionals like doctors and lawyers, anyone involved in government, anyone who got wealthy by working with the colonial plantations…
My MiL’s father worked in the government, high up enough that he saw what was coming. They fled the country through the jungle to escape. He couldn’t convince the rest of the family to leave. They just disappeared.
The death toll was a quarter of their own population, their own people. Sometimes for nothing more than wearing glasses.
That is interesting to hear. But just the fact that so many people were just seperated from the families, men to one place. Women to another. Kids to a third.
And so many just randomly killed including babies who were Cambodians
She still doesn’t talk about it. They were lucky — both her parents and all four kids got out. But they had a big close family with “dozens of cousins” and such…
I think one cousin made it out.
How awful for them.
All of the guides had stories like that. Family separated for decades if they even survived.
Your grandparents were amazing to save their kids. I imagine there is a lot of survivors guilt though
Imagine thinking you can only be upset if things happen to people you know personally
Kinda fucked up logic is that
The wife is so nasty and unpleasant I would even go as far as to guess that one of the reasons she’s so dismissive of the atrocities of this genocide is because the victims aren’t white. It is wild the amount of people who disassociate from the suffering of fellow humans because they cannot relate to them or see them as “other”
I have been to the place he described when I was 19 years old. Our tour guide had his family murdered by the regime. He smiled as he showed us the leaves they used off the trees to saw people’s heads off. I remember seeing the mountains of skulls with holes in the top, the mass graves with bits of clothing sticking out. The way they described how the regime would play target practice with babies.
That shit made me sob too.
I went to both S21/Tuol Sleng and Choeung Ek this past fall. I didn't cry, but I was basically fully shut down from the second room in S21 until a few hours after getting back to our hotel. I can't imagine judging someone for crying while seeing/hearing about it unless they were making a big scene about it. It was weirder to me that a few people in the tour group were snapping selfies and then went to a bar right afterwards than it was to see the couple people who were openly crying. I couldn't bring myself to take any photos, but most of what I saw that day is going to be burned into my brain for a long time.
Our group went to a roof top pool afterwards. I needed it to cleanse my soul after witnessing the atrocities.
But I can’t imagine people joking and taking selfies. Ugh.
I'm definitely of the opinion that as long as you're not interrupting others or doing something super disrespectful (like pretending to re-enact some of the horrors), there's not really a wrong way to react, so I didn't really judge them (they weren't joking around at either site, thankfully, just taking selfies like they did everywhere else), it just was more of a "oh, that's your way of handling this?" moment when they asked about a good bar on the drive back to the hotel, while I didn't think twice about the people crying.
That can be true enough
It's wild that Noam Chomsky denied it all happened and people are still listening to his genocide denying ass
Toxic masculinity destroys us all.
My damn husband cried through a damn Bluey episode recently and it warmed my heart it hit home for him so hard.
Ooh which episode??
I don’t follow it closely but a recent longer special where they were going to be selling their house. I swear he was silently sobbing through most the episode 🥹
He knew I was joking, we are comfy with each other like that, but when I noticed I was like “are you crying at a bluey episode…??” and he’s like “I am and I am MAN enough to own it.”
Bluey is emotional damage stg. I cry frequently at episodes lol
I’m not someone that is comfortable showing emotion. That situation would have me in tears. If my significant other judged me for that, she’d be on her ass outside waiting for an Uber.
This one pissed me off. Really hope he leaves her.
I work in an Archive and thus have handled a lot of records pertaining the third reich.
I have been reading many applications for reparations from victims of persecution, listing the names and birth dates of family members killed* by the Nazis. It's devastating to read and sometimes I simply tear up.
I know, it's been a long time ago and I know, that to this day and for all of human kind's history, atrocities happened, happen, will happen again and again, everywhere in this planet. Despite knowing about these inherently cruel facts of human nature, I still feel for these people - infants, toddlers, children, women, men - who were killed for simply not fitting in the nazi-definition of being worth living. I feel for their relatives, who survived, often as the last member of an ounce big and thriving family.
Being empathic isn't a weakness. It's nothing that should be derided. OP's wife is doing just that and to me it's a major red flag and if this was my partner, I couldn't live with someone so callous.
*or "verschollen im Osten" ("perished in the East" as in deported to a KZ) as it is often euphemistically described.
I have never felt so physically oppressed my negative energy than as I did at the killing fields. I do believe in energy, but I’m no psychic picking up “auras” everywhere.
But there, it was dark. And the tree, all I felt was hatred. If it was from the dead for what happened or the living for what was lost, I don’t know. But it takes a cold hard bitch to judge some one for getting emotional at a place like that
Your wife has no empathy.
I’ve visited that same place. Then the killing fields. I don’t know how you’re NOT affected when witnessing those sites.
NTA.
My now husband ugly cried over a Pixar movie when we first started dating and it was such a green flag for me! I was happy he felt comfortable being himself around me. What a miserable woman this poor dude is married to
Absolutely, same! On an early date he wanted to show me “what dreams may come” lol and crying on each other was a sign he could be the one 😁
That man needs to get out. I can’t imagine getting upset at someone for crying just generally, but especially not at a fucking museum about genocide???
That woman is a psychopath. Who wouldn’t be disturbed and upset and devastated by seeing something like that? Hearing about stuff like that? I feel so bad for OP
I have never felt so physically oppressed my negative energy than as I did at the killing fields. I do believe in energy, but I’m no psychic picking up “auras” everywhere.
But there, it was dark. And the tree, all I felt was hatred. If it was from the dead for what happened or the living for what was lost, I don’t know. But it takes a cold hard bitch to judge some one for getting emotional at a place like that
Yes you should divorce that heartless piece of shit.
A man comfortable enough to cry in front of me is honestly a turn on. What the fuck kinda koolaid was this lady forced to drink as a child
Throw the wife and the brother away.
I have a close friend who survived the Killing Fields. I finally watched “First They Killed My Father,” and the hell that people went through is horrid. Genocide is a good enough reason to cry, and if your wife cannot understand this, you're better off without her. She has no compassion.
It seems to me that something is seriously wrong in her head if she can't feel a thkng for a kid's death. My instinct would bé no contact.
She started disrespecting OOP for showing emotion and what should be a laudable amount of human empathy, and people think couple's counseling, which is 90% emotion sifting, would fix anything? If this ain't bait then a lot of people in this story need to consider the consistency of their internal logic. NTA
My thoughts on this are two fold. First, I hate that this actually gained to somebody, if it happened at all. I would hate to think somebody would ridicule their husband for crying over a sensitive subject. My second thought is, how in the hell do you marry somebody and be with them this long without knowing they would react this way? I get that you may not know your spouse 100% before you marry them, but I think this is one of the big problems in marriage and why the divorce rate is so high these days. People get in a hurry to be married without really knowing their soon to be spouse and find outt all these crazy things years into their relationship. I mean how have you not had a conversation about emotions and showing emotion with your wife of 4 YEARS? 🤦🏻♂️
The discussion of toxic masculinity got me thinking.. as a veteran and an ER doctor I’ve seen horrible things- I went to counseling after a several hours failed resuscitation of a pediatric trauma patient. The ER was very busy and after calling the code, talking with the family I quickly went to see the many other patients who had accumulated during the code. I looked around for my helpers and everyone else was crying… I realized something had broken inside me that I wasn’t crying too. The counselor said I was ok- just hardened and focused on what needed to be done but I don’t know…. I think men are often called upon historically to see and do horrible things and keep going… I saw lots of PTSD in the military and concluded that no one comes out of combat unchanged/undamaged. Maybe the culture of toxic masculinity grew out of this sort of stuff- the need to do the terrible mission and not be paralyzed by grief and pain… I don’t know… just thought I’d add this to the Reddit mix
hey man, i’m sorry you’ve been through that. i hope the hospitals you work at have emotional decompression sessions available to you and your team. i’ve always found them helpful in those situations; even when numb, it helps me to hear my colleagues speak about what we went through together out loud.
i realize these sessions aren’t as common as they should be. but it’s important for our brains to process trauma.
We do now… and it is very helpful especially for the younger staff who are having their first day experiences of death and mahem… so you’re medical, too! Good to hear. I met some UN soldiers who had been fighting some of the remnants of the Khmer Rouge during one of my deployments 20 some years ago- sounded awful what happened…
Sadly, the response you got is typical. It’s not universal, but it’s commonplace.
We get asked why we don’t open up. Why we don’t show emotion. Why we don’t speak up about what bothers us.
This story is why.
The subject immediately switching to how it upset her, and now she’s the one that needs consoling is why.
That this will be brought up as a weapon in a future argument is why.
Stop asking us to open up, then despising us for it when we do. For the minority of you who don’t do this, kudos. For those who claim they wouldn’t, we have well-founded doubts about that.
OP’s girlfriend is just a psychopath. This is not a normal thing for women.
Not for you it seems. Thank you for that.
But I’ve just heard about it, experienced it…
Im sure it’s not the case in the majority of relationships, but very common.
People suck sometimes.
There have been so many of these kinds of stories lately (wife being disgusted by husband crying) that it makes this look fake.
I have never felt so physically oppressed my negative energy than as I did at the killing fields. I do believe in energy, but I’m no psychic picking up “auras” everywhere.
But there, it was dark. And the tree, all I felt was hatred. If it was from the dead for what happened or the living for what was lost, I don’t know. But it takes a cold hard bitch to judge some one for getting emotional at a place like that
I have never felt so physically oppressed my negative energy than as I did at the killing fields. I do believe in energy, but I’m no psychic picking up “auras” everywhere.
But there, it was dark. And the tree, all I felt was hatred. If it was from the dead for what happened or the living for what was lost, I don’t know. But it takes a cold hard bitch to judge some one for getting emotional at a place like that
Ngl I shed a single tear in front of my ex of 8 years one time and I think that will pretty much do it for me for a lifetime lol.
Wow. I think people need to realise the basic fact that:
REAL.MEN.CRY
the men with very shallow, and paper-thin, overly toxic masculinity pretend not to have emotions and pretend that they can’t cry, but they’re not real men, they’re uneducated little boys in adult bodies
Damn is she a sociopath? Either way she is one sick person
What the fuck is wrong with men showing vulnerability? They always have to comfort their partners in their moments of vulnerability, but the same can't be done for them? It's stupid
I mean, counselling is almost never a bad idea.
She either lacks empathy or has absorbed the unfortunately common idea that men crying is bad. Or maybe there’s something else.
No matter what the why is, some therapy might help them both get to the bottom of why she acted so unacceptably. Op might get some closure, she might learn something important about herself. If she’s picking fights instead of communicating, she’s not very self aware, and shouldn’t be married.
Op is, of course, not obligated to help her figure her issue out, and is definitely not obligated to stay with someone who doesn’t love and respect him.
Yea dude this is why I am an antinatalist. She’s 100% right. This shit happens all the time. This and worse. I think you are totally fine to cry in this situation. But if the moment came where you were asked to smash three year old skulls in with the troops, or be subjected to the brutality you witnessed, what are you gonna do? She has to consider that. I’m by no means saying this is a healthy view. Just pointing out the fact that there are two escalating conflicts occurring right now. You think Ukrainian men aren’t being tortured to death in Lubyanka?
WOW, this woman’s lack of empathy is frightening and repugnant!
He wasn’t crying bc of those kids. There’s something else
There is nothing more repulsive and alarming than seeing a grown man cry, especially one you’re married to. Seeing him cry over something he wasn’t involved in makes her feel unsafe with him. A man who cries at a museum isn’t going to protect you if there’s a home invasion he’s going to cower and sit back while god knows what is done to them. If they are on a boat that sinks he won’t be the one to lead or save them. If someone talks shit to him he won’t defend himself.
Yeah- the content at the museum is tragic but he didn’t have any personal connection to that time or those people in any way. When I go to the 911 memorial I get the most intense feeling of dread and sadness and it makes me cry just being in the space but I watched it happen in real time so a visceral reaction in that case is different
It’s so funny how men are dogged for “toxic masculinity” when those traits are why we live in comfort and safety today..none of the women here who say they are ok with a man crying out of the blue is being honest
This particular woman, because of what she said and how she chose to pick fights with you,no. But it is somthing normal a man goes through, so OPs brother was correct. In my experience therapy would probably be the answer, as her "image" of OP has been destroyed. The relationship is over, she no longer respects him on a fundamental level.
Women love to use themselves as an example of strenght and superiority until its time to insult a man. If she ever does that "like a bitch" "like a woman" etc thing, you've lost her respect on a fundamental level, its over, she now just wants to bother you. The "little dick" comments will be on the next insult.
Never have a child with her, especially a male. Empathy is severely lacking
Run!
Woah! This bad. I don’t understand why some women are so uncomfortable seeing men express their emotions.
I’ve seen my dude cry many times. Yes it’s hard to see because I love him and hate seeing him in distress. But I also think it’s beautiful. A big part of why I love him is because of his capacity to care for and love others. He has a big heart and as his partner I need to care for it. Like he does for me.
I wonder if this woman isn’t the monster that I initially visualised when I read this post. I hope she grow in time.
Men and women - you all deserve to end up with someone who acknowledges and looks after all of you. Tears and all.
lol this sub always has themes. One week everyone has a wife that became a surrogate without their knowledge. Next week everyone has a kid that isn’t theirs. Next week everyone’s wife made fun of them for crying. Be orginaaalll if you’re gonna troll.
I agree that partners should feel emotionally safe with their significant others shaming them for crying is not that but its also normal for a partner to give you the momentary ick over certain habits. I think its a green flag for a man to express empathy over something not immediately connected to him like the genocide of little kids .. thats obvious since many men in the world do not have this empathetic feeling thats why we have genocides to begin with.
If a man started blubbering over something that was directly his fault and/or trying to escape accountability I understand having a ick
Get the hate out of here? This is a horrible no-empathy person, this has nothing to do with getting the ick.
A PERSON cried at seeing heinous shit.
What is up with this needlessly gendered crap?
They are just a sexist toxic person
Stories like this always make me so sad. I hope to be a person my significant other feels safe to show any emotion in front of. Three former partners have cried in front of me, multiple times for various reasons.
Showing vulnerability is not something a partner should ever be shamed for.