Today on the “Am I The A—hole? (AITA?)” subreddit, we stumbled upon a person who is shockingly kind based on what we usually see on Reddit. You see, this 37-year-old man who originally posted (the “OP”) shares two daughters with his 37-year-old wife Jen. Last weekend, his wife took their 13-year-old daughter “Emily” out shopping while he stayed home with their 7-year-old.
Nothing out of the ordinary so far.
Everything was seemingly fine until OP got a call from Emily three hours after she and her mom left. “She was very upset on the phone and was crying,” the man said in his post.
What Happened?
You see, Emily and her mom split up to look at different sections. Jen is now missing and her phone is going to voicemail.
“[Emily] had asked an employee to make a speaker announcement and no one had come forward,” OP said.
Can we just pause and say kudos to OP, his wife, or whatever other adult taught Emily to do that? That was a great idea to go to an employee for help.
By the time Emily had called OP, Jen had been gone “for around an hour.” An hour.
“I told Emily not to panic and I came straight down,” OP said. “When I got there, Jen was still gone, and I couldn’t see her car in the parking area. We searched for Jen in the stores that are next door in case she went in one of them, and I also tried to call her.”
If you’re OP, you’d be freaking out, right? Your wife is nowhere to be found, you can’t get in touch with her, her car is gone, and your daughter was abandoned for an hour. You’re imagining the worst, right?
Hearing From Jen
Finally, around forty. minutes. later. (4-0!), Jen calls OP to say she is on her way back to the store. WHAT?! So after being MIA for nearly two hours, she just nonchalantly calls to say she’s heading back to their young teenage daughter whom she had effectively abandoned?!
“I asked where she had been, and she said she drove to another nearby store that she wanted to go to,” OP said. “I asked why she didn’t bring Emily or at least tell her that she was leaving, and she said because she did not expect to take a long time or for Emily to even notice that she was gone.”
*Jaw drop*
She left her daughter. Who is a minor. And drove to a whole other store! This isn’t just going to a different floor of the department store or one store over in the mall. She went out to the car, put on her seatbelt, drove away, and at no point did any warning bells go off.
OP said Emily has been “distraught” and “avoiding” her mother.
The Fight
When the family of four got home, OP and Jen had an argument in which he called her “irresponsible.” “Irresponsible?” That’s putting it incredibly lightly (and thus incredibly kind). Jen is pissed at the use of the word, and we can’t fathom how she doesn’t think that’s the nicest way of putting it. After all, she left their child in public without any warning for close to two hours and was unreachable.
“Jen says I just want to treat Emily like a baby and that she is old enough to be able to be on her own in a store,” OP wrote. “I asked Jen why she did not answer her phone and she says she accidentally put it on Do Not Disturb.”
AITA for calling my wife irresponsible, possibly being overprotective of my daughter?
byu/Ambitious_Report668 inAmItheAsshole
“I know I can be overprotective of my kids but we do live in a high-crime area and it makes me very angry that Emily was left feeling scared. Am I the a—hole?” OP asked.
Reddit’s Reaction
More than 8.2K Redditors weighed in, and they’re as furious at Jen and her actions as she is about the use of the word “irresponsible.” They’re also incredibly suspicious of Jen, saying her actions are “sketchy” and that “something is WAY OFF HERE.” Plus, they don’t buy the BS that her phone was “accidentally” on Do Not Disturb.
“I’m immediately suspicious of what your wife was actually doing … I can’t imagine [doing this to anyone] … Let alone a freaking CHILD. Forget for a second whether or not she should have left the kid at the store alone. How the BLEEP do you not text them and say, ‘Hey, I’m going to x store, I’ll be back in a bit.’ Unless you don’t want to risk them saying, ‘Oh, I’ll come with you.'”
“[Do Not Disturb] does NOT happen in any way accidentally. She did not want to be disturbed. While she was allegedly ‘shopping’ without the child.”
Ultimately, Redditors have decided this whole thing reeks of either an affair or a drug problem. This was not some harmless mistake.
“As someone with a tendency to wander off and make others upset (sorry), that’s not wandering off, that’s sneaking away,” one person said, bolding their point for emphasis.
While the internet has dubbed Jen to be so much more than just “irresponsible,” they’ve also taken the time to say how proud they are of how Emily handled such a scary situation.
“I totally want to give that 13-year-old a hug. That could have been a terrible situation. She absolutely did the correct thing by calling her dad!!”
“To do this to anyone is callous at best. To do this to your 13-year-old daughter is callous AND irresponsible. Your daughter is going to remember this day, and how her mother treated her. Luckily for her, she will also remember how quickly her dad came to help and stood up for her too.”
Ultimately, we can’t say we blame Emily for “avoiding” her mom. After all, that’s what Jen did to her — in pretty much the worst possible way.
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