Reddit Stories - DECLINED to allow my spouse to DISTRIBUTE live pet fish to CHILDREN at

Episode Date: November 25, 2025

#redditstories #askreddit #aita #relationships #family #pets #children #decisionsSummary: I DECLINED to allow my spouse to DISTRIBUTE live pet fish to CHILDREN at an event, causing tension in our relationship. I felt it was inappropriate and potentially harmful to the fish and children involved.Tags: redditstories, askreddit, reddit, aita, tifu, relationships, family, pets, children, decisions, event, tension, inappropriate, harmful, fish, spouse, distribute, live, pet, redditcommunityBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/reddit-stories--6237355/support.

I hope you enjoy this story. Declined to allow my spouse to distribute live pet fish to children at our son's birthday celebration once more following her actions last year that upset all the guardians. Now she called me controlling and were getting divorce. For some context, the story starts last year at our seven-year-old son's birthday party. I, 32M, and my wife, 32F, held the party at our home. We decided to leave the bulk of the planning to my wife, as she loves this kind of thing and wanted to take the reins. I had no reason to doubt any of her plans, as she did a great job with our past parties.

I handled invites, food orders, and anything else she needed me to do. To her credit, she did a great job with the party itself. Everything ran smoothly and the kids had a great time. Until she brought out the party favors that she had kept a surprise from me. me. They came out when our friend had to leave with her daughter right after the cake. Before she could, my wife went into the back room and came out with the biggest grin on her face. What was inside the bag, you ask? A small tetra fish from the pet store, to be given as a party favor. My friend was flabbergasted. Her daughter's face beamed with excitement at the

sight of her new pet. Mommy, I've always wanted a fish. My friend was at a loss for words, only glaring at me. She declined the fish, walking out of the party while her daughter clung to her, throwing a tantrum about turning down her new pet. Obviously, the chaos caused a scene, as all the children now knew about the fish. Every single parent in the room was pissed. Glaring, muttering, the whole works. What are we going to tell our kids?

Great, now I have to get a fish tank. Most parents obliged and reluctantly accepted the fish. The whole time, my wife was elated at the sight of the happy children, oblivious to how their parents reacted. We ended up having to take a few fish home that had been turned down, meaning we also had to buy a tank. My wife couldn't understand why anyone would pass up a wonderful 50-cent fish she grabbed this morning from Petsmart. Fast forward to now, one year later. It's a month away for my son's eighth birthday party, and the first one day. my wife broached the topic of party favors. She exclaimed that we should hand out fish again.

The kids loved it, it was a hit last year. I do not want to go through this again. Several of my friends who were at the party complained about having to take care of these fish, being put in a situation where they felt pressure to accept the gift to avoid upsetting their child. They had never received such a ridiculous party favor, and they wouldn't be attending if this was the case again. Not to mention, this feels horribly abusive to the fish who now have owners who don't want them. My wife brushed all of this off, saying that the parents were being selfish for not thinking about what makes the kids happy. She apparently didn't notice anyone upset at the party, only focusing on how the kids felt. She's calling me controlling, saying she doesn't even want to plan the party if she can't have this her way.

All of her small group church friends agree with her. I don't want to upset my friends by putting them in an unfair situation, but I don't want to upset my wife because she truly does enjoy putting these events together. So, Reddit, Ida for telling my wife not to buy party favor fish? Comments where O.P. has replied. Comment 1. NTA she gave the parents an obligation, not a treat for the children. Hoop. I'd be so upset if that happened to me. She has already argued. I'd love to receive pets as a party favor. Who wouldn't?

She loves animals and can't understand that other people's situations may not be ideal for adding a pet. Comment 2. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of parents are SVPD know this year. And if she does fish again, no one will come to her son's parties again after this. She needs to think about her son and his future, she needs to think about the fish, she needs to think about the other parents and her spouse. O.P., instead of getting her jollies off excited while she makes everyone else miserable. Oh, O.P., you're absolutely right.

It's so unfair for our son if his friends don't attend BC of her actions. Comment 3. That's not a gift. Your wife is giving out chores and unwanted expenses to those parents. Wife is very selfish for that. Ask her if she is willing to be. to buy the fish tanks, supplies, and food, and is she willing to go feed each fish daily and clean their tank when needed? I bet she'll say no.

OOP, I've asked about the fish tanks and she said that would be too expensive to buy 20 fish tanks, which I thought would convince this is a bad idea. Comment 4. What? These are live animals, not fucking party favors. NTA OOP, agreed. Animals, not matter how cheap, should never be treated as party favors, ever. Comment 5

This is very typical narcissistic behavior. They are never wrong in any other opinion or even an obvious plan opposite their own isn't worthy of consideration. They don't recognize it at all. A narcissist will seldom do the most appropriate thing, choosing something more complicated that will upset a normal person. OOP, you're very intuitive. I believe you're absolutely right.

She just focused on how the kids were so happy and how that encouraged her to do it again, implying it made her very happy seeing the kids happy. Update 1 Hey, it's been nearly a month since I posted about the party favor situation between my wife and I. My son had his birthday yesterday, I wanted to share an update on how everything turned out. I took your guy's advice and decided to just talk to her. I used a lot of your points from the comments to reason with her, especially the ones about animal abuse. My wife just kept insisting that I was controlling, eventually just shutting down and walking away, giving me the silent treatment.

For those of you asking if this has happened before, yes. Not the party situation exactly, but the I'm going to make a horrible selfish decision and if you push back your controlling behavior. She has, backed out of multiple parties and events last minute because she didn't feel like going, and accused me of abandoning her when I told her I still wanted to go insisted I stopped playing guitar because she finds it annoying attended a wedding in a swimsuit because she was told there was a pool. Proceeded to spend the whole reception at the pool because they're your friends, I don't really care about celebrating them pushed back on my insistence to find a new school for our son, even though he was being bullied, because she didn't feel like causing a scene.

our son is in a new school now, and he's much happier, I was fed up and refused to give in. I can't let my son go through this, and I'm not letting him lose friends because of my wife's selfishness. After literally following my wife around the house, trying to get her to talk to me, she said, fine, if you want it your way, you can plan this party yourself. So, I did. I planned the party myself, besides the invitation, location, and date, which were already planning. My wife also demanded on picking out the cake, and that wasn't a hill I was willing to die on. It wasn't anything special, but I'm actually kind of proud. It was Jurassic Park themed, my son and I just watched all the movies together, and he adores them.

He's really excited for the new one. I themed each table around different dinosaurs, and put little plastic dinosaurs everywhere. As for the party favors, I gave out little bags of candy. Nothing amazing, but the kids were happy, my son was thrilled. And no fish were harmed in the making of this party. After the party, my wife kept telling me how lame everything was. That the party was boring, and the kids weren't literally jumping up and down for my candy party favors like they were for hers.

Frankly, I don't care. Sure, the kids didn't have a brand new pet to bring home, but at least my party favors didn't piss off all of our friends and doom my son to a life of friendlessness. Truly, I don't know how things are going to go with my wife and I. I'm reaching my limit with her insanity. I've tried insisting on marriage counseling, but she refused unless it was done by the pastor of our church. We went, and it was a whole session of the pastor telling me I'm not a good enough man to

take care of my wife. About how I'm turning away from God with my actions, and that's ruining our marriage. Needless to say, we haven't gone back, and ever since my wife loves to use this session against me in arguments. I loved her, but I'm finding it harder each day to keep being in love. I hate the idea of my son thinking this is a happy marriage, and that this is a healthy way to live. Divorce scares me, but I don't know if I can live with this anymore. In the end, thank you, for helping me realize that there's a lot going wrong in my marriage, far beyond a forced fish adoption crisis. I have a lot to think about, but for now, I'm going to finish watching

Jurassic World with my son, who's curled up in my lap. By the way, two of the three fish we had to take home last year are still going strong. They've grown on me. But damn, I'm never getting another fish, comments where OP has replied. Comment 1. Divorce and happy and focusing on your son is more important than miserable and putting your son in a home with a narwhis. narcissistic wife. Oop, I can absolutely understand this. My son is my priority. Her church puts a ton of pressure to never divorce.

She gets so much support through them. They view me as the bad guy comment too. Get a divorce and pick the guitar back up. Oop, I actually did pick the guitar back up not too long ago. When my wife realized I wasn't going to stop for good after all, she demanded that I only play when she and our son weren't home, because he finds it annoying too. That last part hurt deeply, so I asked my son if he's bothered by it at all, and he said no, and that he actually wants to learn how to play too.

Is Upp and his wife planning to have another kid? Oop, she keeps asking me to have another kid, because it'll bring us closer and solve our issues. We keep getting asked at church when are you having another one? Absolutely not, I'm not going through this again. Update 2, it's me, the guy with the wife who gave out fish as party favors. I'm back, and I wanted to update you guys again on how things are going, both because I've seen some eagerness for updates and because this has become a great place for me to vent. To make a long story short, we've decided to get divorced.

To make a short story long, here's how we got here. I took a lot of your comments to hear about divorce and abuse. I've taken a lot of immaturity from my wife over the years, but I told myself I was in the wrong. It's easy to see from the outside that I was in a bad situation, but when you're in it, you don't realize how tough everything gets because it becomes your normal. The fish story was just a tipping point. We went on vacation a couple weeks ago. We traveled down to Georgia to stay with my wife's parents.

To put some perspective on how I've been manipulated throughout this marriage, my in-laws agree with their daughter on just about every disagreement we've had. They once sat me down and lectured me about how I'm not making enough money to support their daughter, that she shouldn't have to work, and that I'm not a good enough man or husband because I don't take her to Disneyland every year. They're very much ingrained in the church culture, hence why my wife relies on her church slash church friends for literally every bit of advice. During our trip, we all went to Cracker Barrel. The whole time, my Mill and Phil didn't talk once to each other. They stared at their phones or at their menus. Everything just felt so cold and uncomfortable. They weren't in love.

They seemed just annoyed to be around each other. And it hit me, that's my wife and I exactly. And that's how it's going to be for the rest of our lives. It's not going to get better. I excused myself to the bathroom and cried. It wasn't about the fish or her wearing a swimsuit to a wedding. I wasn't happy, I was being gaslit constantly, blamed for everything, and was stuck in an emotionally abusive marriage with a childish wife who won't take no for an answer and wants

everything her way, or else I'm apparently a horrible monster. I told my wife later that evening that I wasn't happy with our marriage. Maybe I shouldn't have started this conversation on vacation, but I changed. needed to get everything off my chest. She admitted she wasn't happy either, but just kept telling me that we should try to make things better. That we needed to stay together for our son. When I asked her what we can do to make things better, she said, I don't know, I don't want to talk about this right now. We left it at that and went to bed, we really weren't getting anywhere. We didn't say a word about it for the rest of the trip. We spent a lot of

time apart. I took my son for walks and hikes that my wife didn't want to go on. We all watched movies together, trying to keep the happy act up to avoid ruining the trip for our son. It sucked, but I do think he had a good time regardless of everything. A couple days after we got home from the trip, I got a call from my mom, she was in tears on the other end, asking about my marriage and what was happening between us. Apparently, my wife had called my mom to vent about how terrible of a partner I was, about how I demanded we have segs, not true, our intimacy in general was extremely lacking and she shut down any attempt without negotiation or conversation. I never demanded anything, how I don't make enough to allow her to be a stay-at-home

mom. She hates cooking and cleaning, I'm not even sure what she would do all day as a stay-at-home mom, and again about how controlling I was. I tried reassuring my mom as best as I could, and she said she understood that I had good reasons for how I was behaving in our marriage. But that essentially fractured my relationship between my wife and my mom, and pushed the end of our marriage. I confronted my wife. It wasn't this big dramatic, emotional moment. I was just done. I was apathetic, hollow.

I felt nothing for her anymore. I told her this is not how a person treats someone they love. Do you even love me? After a long pause, my wife said, no. I honestly don't love you. And in truth, I didn't love her anymore. I ended it there, telling her fine, we're getting a divorce. And all she said was that's your decision.

If that's what you want. So, that's where we're at. We haven't started anything legally official yet, but we're on our way. I'm sleeping on the couch, she's declared she wants to keep all the pets, except the fish, of course. My son is taking it well. We told him together, and all he said was it's okay, I knew it was going to happen soon. He's so incredibly smart and mature at eight years old, and I'm really grateful he understands. We reassured him that we both love him dearly, and that even though this is a big change, we're all going to do everything we can to

make this easy. As for her church, I found out all along she was sleeping with the pastor, Nah, I'm just kidding. For some backstory on our church experience, I used to be pretty religious and attended church A with my wife. I started questioning my faith and told her how I was feeling. She got so angry, angrier than I've ever seen her. She tried to hit me, so I blocked her arm. My wife then screamed at me for putting my hands on her, and tried to leave with our son, he was four at the time. I refused to let him go with her, and she stormed off on her own.

My wife told all of our church friends how much of a monster I was for what I did, to the point where they started encouraging her to call the police on me. She never did. She just told me that's what they advised her to do. After that, I refused to go to that church and later joined Church B, which my wife joined too. She wasn't motivated to go to Church A without me. We left Church B for a multitude of reasons, terrible leadership, money laundering, poor treatment of our son, and my wife insisted we go back to Church A. I tried, but everyone there treated me so coldly. Not once after the incident did any one of my friends from church ask how I was doing or if what they were told was true. I stopped going to church altogether, and she kept going. Now, they've all but excommunicated me, and I never planned to speak to any one of them again. I have a long road ahead of me. But I'm just grateful to be taking the steps I need to be happy and free from this marriage. Thank you. In a way, I always knew something had to change.

But seeing your replies helped validate everything I was feeling, and made me feel a bit less crazy. Next story, boyfriend told me at a public holiday party to find another man who wants to marry me if I ever change my mind about marriage. Then got mad when another guy asked me out for a serious relationship so I finally left him. I, 44F, live in a small town, population about 2000. I've been dating my boyfriend, 52M, for eight years. We were at a holiday party in December with probably 200 guests.

Someone asked when we were planning to get married. B.F. said never. People continued to press the subject, so I said that neither of us wanted to get married currently, but if it changed, we'd be sure to let them know. So B.F. said, if you ever change your mind about marriage, don't bother talking to me about it. Just move on and find a man who wants to marry you. Everyone was staring. I cried, we went home. He has brought it up a couple of times since then, but it's not really something I see a point in discussing. He's made it clear from day one that he doesn't want to get married. I don't want to

either. I wouldn't have said what he did in public, but it's the truth. The way he said it embarrassed me and it hurt my feelings that he was so flippant about breaking up and going our separate ways after eight years of being in love, but again it's nothing I didn't know from private conversations. Every Tuesday we have dinner with friends at this Mexican restaurant. So last night at dinner a guy that I know socially from living in the same small town walked up and said that he knew I was exclusively dating BF, but he just wanted to say that I should call him if I ever decided that I wanted a serious relationship. Then he looked at B.F. and said, nothing personal man. I know we go way back, they are about the same age and hung out in high school and in their early 20s, but if she ever decides she wants more than casual dating, it would be over between you two anyway. After we got home, B.F. was upset with me for not making it clear

that we have more than a casual relationship. I told him that I wasn't the one who made our relationship status unclear, and if he felt something was unclear or misunderstood he could have set things straight himself. Update, after posting I did a lot of reflection on our relationship. One day I just packed what I had at his house and brought it all to my house while he was at work. When he came home, I told him that I had moved my things out and I wasn't going to be around anymore. I gave him his house key. B.F. feels blindsided by my moving out. He doesn't understand how we went from happy and peaceful to me moving out and living an hour plus away when essentially nothing changed. I still have feelings for him but it wasn't

nearly as painful as I expected it to be. I have too many hard feelings towards him for the way he treated me and my kids, especially in the beginning of our relationship to try to salvage anything between us. And I most definitely have too much resentment towards his youngest son, 24M, to ever consider working on things and trying to be anything that resembles a family with either of them. Eight years and I packed everything I had there in two hours, like I was never there. During the first couple of years I did tell him how he made me feel, but his answer was always this is the deal, take it or leave it. It took eight years but I decided to leave it. I suppose at some point I emotionally checked out of the relationship and just sort of

let things be. Many of the issues have just sorted themselves out with time, but the underlying herd is still raw. My house really doesn't feel like home to me anymore. I've been staying with my children, who are away from home attending college. I've completely moved out of my house and I officially put it on the market last Friday. For now I'll just commute to work until I figure out what I want to do going forward. Edit, first let me say that I'm absolutely amazed by all your kind words and well wishes. I can't believe how kind of supportive you guys have been. I'll address a couple of the common comments slash questions. First, I guess the most popular is about the guy from the Mexican restaurant. I've spoken to him since, but it's not the fairy tale ending you guys are

dreaming of. I'm definitely not in a place where I'm ready to date, and I can't remember his exact words but the jest was he'd be happy to take me out sometime but he was just being dick too. Exed B.F. on purpose because of what he said at the party and other things he'd seen B.F. do over the years. Very anticlimactic, I'm afraid. Although he does frequently work around where I'm living, so who knows what the future holds. Second, financial concerns. If you guys want to take back all your, I'm proud of you comments, I understand. I really have no excuse for staying. I'm well educated. I earn a good living, well above six figures. I wasn't always but I literally spent 20 years going back to school time and time again. For the past few years, I've made significantly more money than, XBF.

I really have no excuse for why I stayed so long.