'AITA for doting on my buddy's pregnant wife? My wife says I put her first.'
"AITA for doting on my buddy's pregnant wife?"
Both_Warning_9529
My best friend "Chris" and I are both expecting our first babies with our wives. My wife is 36ish weeks and I believe Chris's wife "Polly" is somewhere around 28 weeks. Chris and I are very different in how we treat our wives and their pregnancies.
Like Chris still has Polly do a lot, whereas I will take the weight off my wife in literally any single possible way that I can. Even small things. Mainly because I feel utterly useless and I don't want my wife straining herself to do things I could easily do myself while she is growing my baby and uncomfortable anyway. But I guess I f*&^%d up the other day.
So Chris and Polly invited us out on their boat to go swimming and fishing. My wife was a bit uncomfortable because she's getting close to her due date and is just afraid of going in to early labor, so her anxiety is a bit heavier than usual.
Well, Chris kept asking Polly to get up and do s$*t for him and I would go right behind her and be like "no, sit down, I've got it" and essentially did the same thing I would do with my own wife. Well, there's a store along the lake that we stopped off at so I could grab some beers and Polly asked me to grab her a few things, so I did (a mixture of both snacks and drinks- like 4-5 items).
When I got back to the boat, my wife looked in the bag, saw what I got, and was immediately p*$#ed off and didn't talk to anyone for easily an hour. I had no idea why she was upset, so when we stopped off and Chris and Polly jumped in to swim, I asked what was wrong.
She's like "pretty f*%$ing pathetic that you get her literally everything she asked for and you couldn't even get me the one thing I asked for". I told her I didn't hear her ask for anything and she said "yeah because you were so busy doting on someone else's pregnant wife that you couldn't pay attention to what your own wife was saying".
I truly didn't hear her. But then Chris gets back on the boat a bit later and looks at my wife and says "where's your drink?" And my wife just glared at me. So apparently, my buddy heard my wife but I didn't.
Which, of course, just adds fuel to my wife's anger because it looks really bad (I was right beside my wife and Chris was on the other side of the boat- so I should have heard her).
Later on in the night, she told me that she's "never been so uncomfortable in her life" (because Polly and Chris both noticed that I didn't get my wife the one thing she asked for, after getting Polly everything she asked for, so it embarrassed her).
She said that she's not comfortable with me doting on Chris's wife at all and that she doesn't want to hang out with them for a while because she's now insecure over this. I was just trying to be nice. AITA?
Here were the top rated comments from readers:
hammond66
I thought it was going to be the friend who got upset for making him look bad to his wife.
BrandonJTrump
YTA not for helping your friend’s wife, not for not hearing our wife (you can’t magically hear everything), but for not checking with your wife if she wants anything. That would have been the decent to do.
Hawkfan4_life
This! whether you(OP) heard her or not is irrelevant. Why didn't you ask YOUR WIFE if she needed anything? You literally ignored your own wife's needs seemingly to show up your friend and in turn made YOUR spouse feel like s#*t.
RIPseantaylor
This doesn't make sense, if you've been bending over backwards to make your wife's life convenient for the past 30ish weeks then I doubt that she'd react this strongly the one time you messed up and didn't listen.
Have you asked your wife's perspective on how you've been during her pregnancy? It's entirely possible you haven't been as helpful as you think. The way your wife reacted I just can't imagine that this is the first time you made her feel that way.
hmmngbrd37
Don’t forget that she didn’t want to go on this outing at all. He started by ignoring that. I agree that his glowing description of himself is a bit suspect. Also, who doesn’t check in with their partner to se if they want something, whether they’re pregnant or not?
ResurrectionScary
YTA It seems like you were so busy trying to show up your buddy for not meeting his responsibilities, you fucked up and ignored your own responsibilities.