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It was a bit extreme.
By Nia Tipton — Written on Dec 04, 2022
"We’ve been married for 3 years and I only just found out recently that before we got married my husband ran a background check on me and my family," a woman recounted in a confessional post shared to the subreddit "r/AmItheA--hole."
The subreddit is an online forum where users try to figure out if they were wrong or not in an argument that has been bothering them.
While most marriages come with their different ups and downs, one woman's appalling findings gave her an entirely different perspective on her husband.
The woman was left shocked after discovering her husband's secret background check on her.
In her Reddit post, the woman explained that she and her husband had been on vacation with his family when she found evidence of the background check.
"I had no interest in participating in a few times so I stayed behind," she wrote. Her husband had left his laptop behind so she'd be able to use it since she left hers at home.
While searching for the folder she'd made using her name on his laptop, the woman stumbled upon something she was certainly not meant to find.
"I found another folder with my name. The folder was full of reports on me, my family (including extended family), and two of my childhood friends," she revealed.
Before her husband and his family returned, she hurriedly tried to read as many of the reports on his laptop as possible.
At first, the woman described herself as being "hurt" that her husband had run a secret background check on her and her loved ones, but that hurt quickly faded to anger.
"I was just hurt he would do something like this without talking to me first but as I read more and started finding out things about my family and friends that I never even knew, I started to get angry."
In an attempt to put words to her feelings, she explained feeling "cold" all over, as if she'd just been doused with a bucket of ice water.
She immediately confronted her husband about the folders on his laptop when she saw him.
When her husband eventually returned, the woman didn't waste any time going to confront him about the findings on his laptop.
"At first, he tried to say it wasn’t a big deal and his cousin chimed in to say it was normal and he wasn’t the only one who had done it in their family," she recalled.
When her husband noticed that she wasn't calming down, he tried to usher her back to their shared room where they would be able to talk about it privately—only, she wasn't budging.
In a fit of rage, she told her husband she wouldn't go anywhere with him, and that she was leaving the vacation entirely.
"My husband told me to stay and he would sleep somewhere else or he would leave but we were staying in a house owned by his parents and it felt weird for me to stay and make him leave, especially since his family were there still too."
Her husband's argument for her to stay prompted the woman to stay at the hotel for the night, though the two ended up flying back home the next morning, cutting their vacation short.
She concluded by asking if she was in the wrong for how she reacted after learning what she had about her husband.
Most people who commented on the woman's Reddit post agreed that she was NTA (Not The A-hole).
"I don’t think it’s super unusual to do a background check on someone, but the fact that it’s your family, extended family, and friends lead me to believe that this is some YOU-level [stalking]," one user commented.
Other users voiced why the husband would feel the need to conduct a background search, which the woman answered in the comment section.
"My husband told me he [and] his dad asked [the private investigator] to find anything that could be an unwanted surprise/potential problem in the future so I wasn't sure to what extent a PI would go to figure that out since it seems so vague to me."
Another user added, "This shows he did not trust you enough to be honest about your past and I cannot fathom building a relationship with anyone who you do not trust."
"And why would your family and childhood friends' past be in any way relevant to your relationship?"
A third user chimed in, "If you gave him no reason to distrust you, that's just weird. It is not normal to run a background check on someone AND their family, especially as he never mentioned it to you."
Nia Tipton is a writer living in Brooklyn. She covers pop culture, social justice issues, and trending topics. Keep up with her on Instagram and Twitter.