Woman's silly joke about divorcing her husband has severe consequences, sparking debate

Showing regard for others' feelings is a quality that doesn’t come with age. It needs to be cultivated consciously as one grows up. Adults don’t just magically change. In marriage, this emotional maturity—or lack thereof—can impact a partner's relationship, as was the case with a woman who goes by u/ThrowRALivid_Tear on Reddit. In a recent post, the 28-year-old woman shared how she played a “joke” on her husband, not considering that it might hurt him. And it ended up hurting him so much that he packed his bags and left the marriage for good. “A joke I made is spiraling out of control, and I'm losing a man I truly love over it,” the woman lamented to the Reddit users while seeking their advice.

In her post, the woman said that she had been married to her husband for the past four years. She loves him so much that she “can’t see a life without him.” However, one instance of her puerile behavior caused her marriage to crumble. The impetus for her behavior was encouraged by some of her girlfriends, who urged her to play a prank on her husband that all of them had already tried on their partners. “The joke is basically telling your partner you want to break up or that you want a divorce,” the woman remarked.

She said that she never wanted to play out this joke with a man she loved so dearly. However, when her friends didn’t stop pestering her, she jumped on the bandwagon and walked into a silly trap. Her friends told her that their partners begged, tried to talk to them, or offered suggestions when they played this joke on them. So, this woman too expected a similar reaction from her husband. But far from responding humorously, her husband took her words to heart. “We had dinner and were watching a movie when I told him, ‘I'm not happy anymore, and I think we should get a divorce.’ He looked at me for a couple of seconds. […] He got up, walked into our bedroom, and within 10 minutes came out with a bag and walked out of the house without saying a word to me,” she shared.

Finding herself unexpectedly in a tight spot, the woman did everything she could to get her husband back. She flooded him with messages, calls, emails, and video chats. She even got in touch with her husband’s friends, colleagues, parents, and siblings, but none of them offered any help. She screenshotted the conversations with her girlfriends and sent them to him to explain that it was just a “joke,” but it was too late. He didn’t respond. Meanwhile, her friends weren’t any help either. They told her that he would “get over it.”

One day, her chaotic situation went from bad to worse when she received a batch of divorce papers from her husband.

“It felt like someone slapped me in the face and hit me and continued to hit me. I was, and still am, in so much pain,” she recalled. Sullen, disappointed, and regretful, the woman asked Reddit users for help: “How can I get the man I love back? I don't want to lose him. I made a stupid joke; I know that, and now it's breaking my world apart.”

Thousands of people reacted to the woman’s post with utter disbelief and outrage. They called her out, saying that what she did wasn’t “a joke.”

“You did something spectacularly stupid, and are facing the consequences for it,” said u/nightsofthesunkissed. u/relevancejackwhite reflected that her marriage didn’t break due to a joke, but due to her inability to tell “no” to her friends, who were apparently not mature enough to understand the dynamics of the marriage. u/discombobulatedtill wrote, “I'm in disbelief that a woman your age would go along with something so immature and hateful.” Ultimately, people told her that it’s too late, but nevertheless, she could consider changing her friends.