‘I Tried To Buy A Child’s Toy To Cope With Trauma & My Husband Yelled At Me’ – Woman Seeks Advice After Argument
Why did he treat her like that?
Asier Romero and Tasha Cherkasova / Shutterstock Everyone has trauma. No matter what a person has been through, it will impact them in ways that we might not always understand. Along with trauma, everyone has their own way of coping, and no one should tell you that there’s a right or wrong way to cope.
A woman shared her strategy for coping with her childhood trauma — and her husband's negative reaction.
The woman explained on Reddit that while shopping with her daughter and husband, the woman spotted a toy doll that looked a lot like one she had in her childhood. But when she wanted to purchase it, her husband yelled at her and told her to “grow up” for wanting a doll that looked like the same one she had as a child.
“We were out grocery shopping today, and our daughter of course wanted a toy,” she wrote. “So as she’s looking around I noticed a doll that looked strikingly similar to one that I had as a kid.”
She said that she was “drawn to it,” and decided to grab it and bring it to where her husband was standing with the cart, and this is where things get ugly.
“I told him that this looked like a childhood doll of mine that my mother had burned and told him I planned to purchase it,” she wrote. “I didn’t think this would be an issue but he kinda just glared me down.”
“He asked why, and that I was almost 30 and didn’t need such stupid kid crap,” she continued. “I explained in my traumatic upbringing I didn’t have many toys, and the one doll I did have meant everything to me. It looked just like her and that I think it would really help me feel a little more whole again.”
After this explanation, surely, he would see that she really wanted this doll as a way to cope with her horrible past and support her in her quest to heal her childhood trauma — guess again.
“He rolled his eyes, grabbed the doll and tossed it back on the shelf,” she wrote. “He said ‘Alyssa is the only kid here. If I had wanted to marry a kid I’d be in jail. Grow up.’ I tried to say something else but he just yelled ‘Drop it!’ and that was that.”
She mentioned that he never reacts in that manner or behaves like that at all, so she chalks it up to him being in a bad mood, but the incident sits with her and unearths those past memories.
“I keep reliving those memories with my doll, up until my mother destroyed it,” she concludes. “That doll was there for me when my stepdad would hurt me and all the yelling and fights happened. I feel so stupid but I really just wanted to hold her again, even if it’s not the original.”
It can be difficult for people to understand their partner's trauma.
"An inability to be curious or open or kind to you about your background and what you struggle with may suggest an inability to be curious or open or kind with himself," psychotherapist Sahaj Kaur Kohli explained in an advice column, suggesting the woman's husband could be dealing with his own traumas being triggered by her story.
Sure enough, in an update to the post, she explained her husband's behavior. She revealed that her husband had received stressful news about his mother, didn’t want to stress her even further, and lashed out at her because of what he was dealing with.
“He apologized and said he shouldn’t have taken his emotions out on me. I have the doll now and all is well,” she wrote.
Isaac Serna-Diez is the Assistant Editor for the Entertainment & News department on YourTango.com. He focuses on writing about pop culture, the entertainment industry, social justice, and current events around the country.