Woman Called 'Selfish' For Asking Her Boyfriend To Cancel His Boys' Night The Day Her Mom Passed Away
If he isn't there for you in a crisis, he never will be. Find a new boyfriend.
F01 PHOTO | Shutterstock One of the few wise things the internet has propagated in recent years is that prioritizing looks, money, bedroom prowess, or any of the other attributes we look for in a mate is a fool's errand. What we SHOULD all be looking for is someone who's loyal, who knows how to argue productively, and who's good in a crisis. Someone who can be counted on when life is bad, because life is bad a LOT of the time.
One woman on Reddit is learning this the hard way with her boyfriend. The trouble is, she doesn't seem to be getting the point, and is asking for advice when the only solution is crystal clear: GET RID.
A woman is devastated that her boyfriend won't cancel his boys night after her mom died.
Call it the 20-something version of that well-known phenomenon in which men leave their wives in droves the moment she is diagnosed with a serious illness. The statistics on that are truly bleak. One study found that 31% of marriages overall end after a diagnosis. But according to another study, the vast majority of those are men leaving sick wives. Men are nearly seven times more likely to bail than women.
From the sounds of it, this woman's boyfriend is getting a head start on being that kind of man. "I got a call from my brother telling me my mom had passed away last Friday," she wrote in her Reddit post. It hit particularly hard because they had never been close prior to reconnecting over the past five years.
"My boyfriend knows how close we had gotten and had even joined me for some of [our visits]," she went on to explain. But that connection did not seem to make one bit of difference when her mother's death happened to coincide with his boys' night.
Her boyfriend called her 'selfish' for asking for his support and ruining his night.
If you have a boys' night planned and your girlfriend's mom dies as you're headed out the door, you cancel the boys' night. That's… just how life works, and any normal person knows this. Count this woman's boyfriend among the deeply abnormal, because he didn't get it at all, to the point he got angry at her for even asking.
When she called him upset after receiving the news, all he had to say was, "I let you know a few days ago I have plans with my friends, I only get to see them once a month." After arguing, they negotiated that he would still go, but leave early. He then reneged on this, too.
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When she protested about this, he basically told her to get over it in the cruelest way possible. "He said I would be fine since I "didn't spend my childhood with her anyways," as if their former estrangement means she isn't affected by the woman's death. Then he had the audacity to scold her for ruining the one night a month he gets to see his friends.
"On one hand, I am extremely heartbroken he wasn't there for me and know that's not something I want for my future," she wrote. "But on the other hand, his words have definitely gotten to me and I feel bad for separating him from his friends."
Trying to find a way to salvage this relationship is unhinged.
I don't mean to be insensitive here, but this situation could not possibly be easier to sort out. She ended her Reddit post by asking, "Where do I go from here?" Ma'am, TO THE CLUB TO FIND A NEW BOYFRIEND. Are you serious?
This touches on one of the most perplexing things about human beings: People are so afraid of being alone that they are willing to put up with outright cruelty to avoid the supposed death sentence of having to eat dinner alone every night or whatever.
But no amount of loneliness is more painful than being abused. And what this guy is doing IS abuse. In fact, it fits a common acronym used by mental health professionals to describe manipulative and narcissistic abuse so perfectly that it feels farcical. DARVO, which stands for Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender, is exactly what this guy has done: insist he's right, scold her for mourning, and then contend that SHE'S the bad guy for ruining HIS night.
Here is the harsh truth: Unless you are trapped in a terrible situation where enduring abuse is the only way to stay alive, allowing someone to treat you this way is a choice. And it should not take more than one delivery attempt for a message as cruel as this boyfriend's to be received.
Even men in the comments agreed. "My wife would have filed for divorce the next day if I went out with friends after her mother passed last year," one man wrote. As she should have. Your boyfriend has made clear he does not care about you. Keeping him around because you're grieving is only going to make that grief worse.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.
