Bride Warned To Flee From Her 'Private' New Husband After Trying To Listen Into Secretive Phone Call With His Family
She thought it was just a cultural difference — & then people started putting the clues together.
Family emergencies never come up at convenient times—that is, of course, part of the meaning of the word "emergency," after all. And for one newlywed bride on Reddit, her first family emergency with her new husband came up at the most inopportune moment—in the middle of their honeymoon.
But as she shared in a post to the "r/AmITheA--hole" subReddit, a forum where people can ask for help figuring out if they're on the wrong side of a conflict or dilemma, she was not about to upend their big trip for something that wasn't life-or-death.
Especially since her husband refused to give her any details about what was going on.
A newlywed bride refused to end her honeymoon for a family emergency her husband said she 'doesn't need to know about.'
The bride and her groom come from two different countries—she's from Thailand and he's from the US—so she assumed her husband's secrecy was just a cultural difference.
The woman's husband insisted they cut their month-long honeymoon short when his brother's family was in a car accident.
The bride was told her husband's brother was okay, but his wife and daughter have been injured due to the accident, and the daughter has been hospitalized. She writes that she understands her husband's concern, but since "he's not a doctor so he can't do anything to help really," so she doesn't see the sense in cutting their honeymoon short when they're only at the halfway point.
"I told him to just call his brother and ask to talk with his wife so he can send her his best wishes and that's all that he can do honestly," she writes. She goes on to say that her husband told her that her in-laws and other family members are helping out as well, so she thinks they should stay because "our honeymoon [is] important because it's a time for ourselves to enjoy and spend together."
Her husband was furious about her response, calling her 'selfish' for not wanting to leave their honeymoon.
"He wasn't having any of it, he called me selfish and then he kicked me out of our bedroom," she writes, going on to say that she had to book her own hotel room until he would let her back into the one they were sharing. He also told her in no uncertain terms that he was ending the honeymoon whether she agreed or not.
"He told me that he's leaving tomorrow because he needs to be supportive of his brother and told me I can continue the trip by myself," she writes.
Her fellow Redditors initially sided with her husband, many of them expressing shock at her callousness. But then some of the commenters began asking questions, and more details about the story came out that changed everything.
The woman revealed that her husband is keeping all details about the family emergency secret from her because she "doesn't need to know."
This immediately sent up red flags for many Reddit commenters, who became convinced her husband is hiding something from her—especially when she revealed she's not allowed to even overhear his conversations with his family.
"He told me I didn't need to know when I asked [for details] and he doesn't want to discuss it with me," she told a fellow Redditor who asked for further details. "He doesn't allow me in the room when he speaks to his family so really I don't know anything other than what my husband told me."
She went on to reveal that when she questioned her husband about this, he told her "this is how relationships work [in America], men like to be more private."
If this is setting off alarm bells for you, you are not alone. Several Redditors recanted their previous condemnations of the new bride, changing their responses instead to warn her of possible worst case scenarios.
After asking further questions of the bride, many became concerned her marriage was faked as part of a human trafficking scheme.
Several commenters at first thought this situation sounded like her husband was hiding an affair, with some people theorizing that "[Sister-in-law]=other wife."
But others saw evidence of something far more nefarious.
When commenters began asking further questions about her immigration status, marriage license, and the legal processes involved in a marriage between a US citizen and someone from another country, the new wife seemed to have no idea how any of those details worked. And the process she says she was told about by her husband didn't add up either.
This led several commenters to suspect that her marriage was almost certainly not legal and that she was likely to be detained by border control when she tried to re-enter the United States with her supposed husband—if he had any intention of bringing her to the States in the first place.
"It sounds like he is planning to go back to the US and abandon [her] in Spain," one commenter deduced. "This is scary. It seems like human trafficking or something bad. None of this is adding up," another person wrote.
According to the United Nations, fake marriage schemes are a common method of human trafficking and smuggling.
And as the video below reveals, human trafficking schemes are frequently far simpler than that—starting with as little as a compliment.
In the case of marriage, the UN classifies two different types of marriages involved in human trafficking and smuggling—forced marriages and sham marriages, the latter often involving falsified documents like fake marriage licenses.
The UN reports that "girls as young as twelve are being forced or tricked into marrying men who exploit them for sex and domestic work." In a wide-ranging study that included the Redditor's home country of Thailand, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime found "several examples of victims being deceived into marriage with promises of a better life abroad."
They also found situations in which "girls and women (and possibly their families) had been deceived about the nature of their marriages, which were temporary and were concluded to allow their husbands to exploit them sexually for limited periods of time."
The details of the bewildered newlywed on Reddit's story sound chillingly in line with one of these schemes.
If you or someone you know is caught in a suspected human trafficking situation, help is available.
In the United States, you can call the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-373-7888 or text "HELP" to BEFREE [233733].
For help outside the United States, visit RAPHA International's website for assistance.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.