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What made her think she could do that?
By Isaac Serna-Diez — Written on May 01, 2022
Being a military wife is never easy, nor is being a military girlfriend.
One 25-year-old woman has been dating her 29-year-old military boyfriend for six months, and things seem to be going well until one day she decided to grab his uniform.
Not only did she grab it, but she put it on, took pictures in it, and posted it to Facebook where everyone could see it, thinking it would be cute.
Except, her boyfriend's reaction wasn’t quite the one she was expecting.
Now she’s wondering if it was wrong to pose in the military uniform.
She took to the best place to find an unbiased third opinion, the subreddit “r/AmItheA--hole” (AITA) and posted her story in hopes that someone would explain to her what was wrong with the situation that had occurred.
The internet strangers that peruse Reddit looking for anything to criticize will do so well-mannerly and through the use of logic, apply a rating that says “You’re the A--hole” (YTA) or you’re “Not the A--hole” (NTA), respectively, along with two other ratings that are handed out much less: “Everyone Sucks Here” (ESH), and “No A--holes Here” (NAH).
After this poster was put on trial by a jury of her peers, everyone was pretty split between YTA and ESH, but context is important.
“I felt bored and decided to put it on and took a picture of me wearing [his uniform],” she writes.
“I then shared it on my Facebook as my ‘story’ and thought nothing of it. But once he found out he blew up and started yelling at me saying I should have never touched his ‘work stuff’.”
It feels like there’s a lack of respect here coming from the girlfriend’s end.
She didn’t think he would react so negatively, so she tried to cover for herself several times only to continuously be berated by him.
“When he found out I posted a picture of me in it he lost it completely,” she continued. “He told me he can't believe I jeopardized his job for ‘sh*ts and giggles’ and for some internet likes.”
By this point, he has still failed to tell her what exactly she has jeopardized or why what she did was wrong — in fact, all he’s done is berate her for doing it.
“He kept mumbling that I screwed him over because the uniform had his name tag on it,” she writes. “I asked so what and he said that I don't get to f--k with his job and sabotage it with how I was acting.”
So close, yet so far. Thankfully, some military veterans and active-duty officers were in the comments and were able to explain why what she did could actually jeopardize his job.
“A US military uniform is for US military personnel,” said one of the top comments.
“I got several briefings while I was in explicitly stating that you are not to allow your s/o, parents, children, etc to wear your uniform and is punishable under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), which can in extreme cases lead to court-martial.”
While this is now totally understandable, it’s also no surprise that an ordinary citizen would have no idea that it could get that serious.
She made the wrong move by not asking him first and thinking that it was within her right to put on his uniform, but he also could have explained it to her calmly without berating her for not knowing any better.
Isaac Serna-Diez is a writer who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics. Follow him on Twitter here.