'AITA for saying my fiancée is useless in emergencies after she abandoned our baby?'
My fiancée is upset that I think she's useless in emergencies.
ExitIcy9757 writes:
I [25m] have a child named Aimie [1f] with my fiancée Jess [24f]. We live together in one of the safest cities in the United States. About four months ago, Jess and I were walking home at night with Aimie sleeping in her stroller.
It was a suburban road that we've walked down hundreds of times. Suddenly, we heard several loud banging noises from around the corner. My first instinct was to check out where they came from, and so I jogged a couple of steps forward to peek and see what was going on.
As it turns out, two teens were hitting the window of an SUV with a baseball bat. I watched them run away, get into a car, and peel out. I turned around to see Jess, but she wasn't there. I looked back the way we came to see her about 50 yards away, running like her life depended on it.
I called out to her a few times but she was obviously scared out of her mind and didn't hear me. A few minutes later I called her on her phone, and she picked up. I explained that it was just a couple of dumb kids with a baseball bat.
Jess sheepishly walked up a few minutes later and I couldn't help but laugh at her. She said that she grew up in a rough neighborhood (she did not) and mistook the sound for gunshots. I actually did grow up in a bad neighborhood and told her they sounded nothing like gunshots.
But what really stuck with me was her first instinct in an emergency was to abandon a 9-month-old baby and her fiance to fend for themselves as she protected her own hide.
Well, last night we were watching a documentary together, and there was a scene with a woman who was frozen in terror during an animal attack. Jess scoffed and said that if it were her, she would have fought back, especially if Aimie were with her.
I looked at her for a few seconds and then said, "Yeah ... you don't really know what you'd do." Jess insisted that she would have fought tooth and nail against any threat against our daughter, to which I responded "Even a couple of kids breaking a car window with a baseball bat? Let's call it for what it is: you're kind of useless in an emergency."
Jess stood up, called me a d&^%head, and walked away. It felt really sh%^ty because she was victim-blaming the woman in the documentary when she showed herself to be a coward of comic proportions. Were my words too harsh?
Here are the top comments:
Early-Tale-2578 says:
NTA (Not the A^@%ole). So she thought it was gunshots so her first instinct was to run which I understand, but what I don't understand is how her mother instincts went out the window and she left her child. Honestly, what you said was true she can't be saying, " oh, I would have fought for my daughter" when she actually left her daughter behind the other night.
PenCareless7877 says:
NTA she said she thought they were gunshots so she ran leaving her baby, I grew up Philly I hear gunshots daily and when there was gunshots near my old house I grabbed my oldest daughter who was three at the time and I covered her with my entire body. She did the complete opposite.
Quelala says:
NTA. It’s instinct to run. I’m imagining you pushing the stroller, but even more so NTA if she was. When we don’t have empathy for others we should be called out on that.
BetweenWeebandOtaku says:
You should probably say earlier on that she left the kid when she panicked. I'm going to say NTA though. Talking tough when you know you're full of s%^t is silly and sad. And she left the kid! That's the lead here.