rSlash - r/Bestof My Joke Ruined a Marriage

Episode Date: November 21, 2024

0:00 Intro 0:10 Ruiner 13:32 Comment 14:17 Halloween costume Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Visit connectsontario.ca. Casino. Gambling Problem Call 1-866-531-2600. Visit connectsontario.ca Welcome to r slash best of redditor updates, where OP discovers that his close friend is actually crazy. Our next reddit post comes from r slash am i the butthole. Am I the butthole for teasing my friend about not recognizing my kid, thus ruining her marriage, and an unrelated engagement party.

So me and my wife have a 5 year old son. Our group of friends is mostly couples with kids, as we're nearing our 40s and so a lot of our meetings with friends now include meeting up as entire families, kids included. This can sometimes mean a lot of adults and a lot of kids. One person in this group, Emma, used to be my roommate in college. She was married and has her own kids, and we hang out with her and her husband sometimes in a group setting, but rarely on our own. Emma also tends to run late often. This is all relevant. One day, like a year back, me and my wife were planning to take our kid to the pool.

I packed my large bag of pool toys. Emma texts me. Her husband is away that day, and she's looking for something to do with the kids. I talk to my wife and tell Emma that we're going to the pool and she's welcome to join us, but we're planning on hitting there early so she can just join us whenever. We arrive at the pool pretty early and get a really good spot poolside, right by the shallows. Soon, another kid is there. It's a kid from my son's kindergarten class.

He's there with his mom. He is, of course, welcome to join us. We know the family. The mom and my wife are pretty friendly and our kids play together often. Then Emma and her kids show up. She's really happy to see me and I give out toys to her kids. All's going well. Then my son's friend runs up and asks for some toy and I go, sure thing, and hand it

to him. Emma goes, oh my god, so cute, he looks just like you. I laugh and say, that's cool, but this isn't my kid. Now, in Emma's defense, the kid does kinda look like me, making the situation kinda hilarious. When my wife and the kid's mom come back, I tell them the story, and they also find it hilarious. We all have a friendly the story, and they also find it hilarious. We all have a friendly chuckle, but think little of it. Fast forward to a few months ago.

I haven't seen Emma in a while. We were at a friend's group gathering, and it was a good time all around. At some point, I see Emma's husband and say, Hey, can you call my wife and kid over? Just make sure it's actually my kid and not some random kid that kinda looks like me. I think it's a hilarious callback He seems confused and kind of angry. He asks what the hell I'm talking about. Why would he call a random kid? I am also confused. So I tell him the pool story. He doesn't laugh

Emma doesn't laugh either the entire thing now feels kind of awkward. I Awkwardly say goodbye, grab my wife and kid, and we leave. Later that day, I text Emma to ask if everything's alright. I get no reply. I text again a few days later, no reply. I get the distinct sense that I screwed up, but also, if she doesn't want to talk to me, I'm not gonna force the issue. This is an engagement party, so no kids. I wasn't supposed to come, but decided to come last minute, and my wife was at home with our kids.

Emma sees me, and she's livid. She wasn't expecting to see me there. She only came because she thought that I wouldn't be here. She does, however, take the opportunity to tear me a new one though. She calls me out in front of everyone. Because of my joke, she uses those air quotes, her husband was furious. From what she said and from what I gathered from mutual friends afterwards, she previously commented on someone else's kid looking like someone who wasn't the father.

Except that whole thing led to a family drama in Emma's husband's family because in that case the dude WAS cheating. And that WAS his kid and a whole bunch of people were really hurt in the aftermath. Emma's husband was furious because he apparently thought that Emma would know better than to comment on the appearance of other people's kids. This sent them down a spiral, especially because the husband apparently thought that Emma told me the story about his family member cheating and that I was mocking him for his family drama and he thought the story that I told was just covering for her when I realized

I screwed up, which wasn't the case. So now Emma and her husband are separated. She's calling me a butthole and says I ruined her marriage. I'm not a confrontational person so I apologize profusely. I say I didn't know any of this and if she didn't want me telling the story she should have said something. She tells me I'm making excuses. This is now a scene. I apologize profusely again and leave quickly after telling the couple a quick congratulations. I'm later told that this was anything anyone could talk about at the party. And now the engaged couple are mad at me too. Emma is even more mad because now everyone knows her drama.

I'm unfriended and unfollowed on everything. The entire thing just kinda sucks. My wife sorta has my back though. She thinks the joke was hilarious, and actually thinks that me breaking up their marriage makes it even funnier because what the hell? She also loves crazy Reddit stories so she sent me here to post this, so at least I have that going for me, which is nice. Then one day later, OP posted an update.

So after posting yesterday, reading the replies and thinking it over, I decided to reach out to Emma one final time. Well, buckle up, because this gets absolutely unhinged. So last night before going to bed, I text Emma a long, thoughtful message. I explain that I do apologize for the part that I played in ruining her marriage and I understand that she's going through a tough time. I understand if she wants nothing more to do with me, but if and when she feels she wants to talk it out, she's welcome to reach out. Then I leave the ball in her court. I show this to my wife and she is practically giddy.

Yes, OP's wife has a thorough understanding of what Reddit stories are like. I wouldn't be surprised actually if OP's wife listens to my YouTube channel because she has an idea of what's coming. Let's see. She tells me there is no way this is not going to blow up in my face and I should have just cut my losses like many of you guys said. Emma shows up at my house at 7am unannounced. I'm like what the hell? She says she really needs to talk to me. I call my wife to the door and explain this. God I can only imagine how excited the wife is at this point. My wife sends me off with this woman because she understands this thing can only go poorly,

and apparently she's here for it, and it's my own fault at this point. Yes, the wife, much like us OP, are eager for the tea. From Emma's perspective, for the last 15 years she's been playing some weird game of 4D chess. Or two different games of 4D chess, maybe? Apparently, she had feelings for me back in college and she was trying to nice girl her way into a relationship with me. By being there for me when my dad died and when I was struggling with being single. She also gave everything to me because she just assumed that at some point I would come

around. You'd think that me getting married or her getting married would change that. And it did, just badly. Apparently, her husband knew about her feelings, which is why he always kept me at a distance. Emma and I never drifted apart. He explicitly asked her not to meet with me anymore outside of large social gatherings. So that day at the pool? Yeah, that was Emma sticking it to her husband because he was away cheating on her or something, and he didn't like her hanging around me all scantily clad.

It wasn't just that he was upset at the joke, he was upset because apparently I was having an affair with his wife and rubbing it in his face. Makes no sense? I know, it gets worse. And that thing at the engagement party? Well, at least she didn't plan that. I told our friends who were getting engaged that I wasn't coming. She asked and verified this. She wasn't expecting to see me as they told her that I wouldn't be there. But once I showed up, she decided to exploit it. She intended to have a huge scene with me so that she could tell her estranged husband and friends that I ambushed her because she broke off our affair. Our affair?

Apparently she and I had an affair? Oh, what affair is that, you ask? I did too. Apparently the story that some people got was that she and I were having an affair and it ended because I was stalking her. Her husband left her because he found out. So people inclined to believe her just thought that's what happened and wanted nothing to do with me anymore.

So why did her husband actually leave? Well, some of you called it. According to Emma, he was cheating on her a bunch and overall just not a nice person. Emma never actually cheated on him, but used me to pretend that she did without my knowledge. So after the joke at the gathering, which may have indeed been in poor taste, they had a huge fight and he left the house. And as for the thing about Emma's husband's family member cheating or something, from what I gather it was some dude sleeping with his cousin's wife or something.

So anyways, she tells me all this insanity and tops it off that my message really moved her and we can still be friends. The reason she showed up at 7am? Apparently my message made her realize that I'm actually the only one who really cares about her, and everyone else in her life is fake and doesn't really care. I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, but this sounds like some really manipulative stuff to me. And now I'm thinking back to our previous interactions, and a lot of them also seem like that to me now. But this? No, I am done. I tell her I am done with her. She can get back to her husband or leave her husband or keep any friends she wants because I'm

just done. I can forgive a lot, but she's been basically not communicating with me for over 15 years. I was telling her everything about my life and my feelings and I was absolutely appalled by just how much of a one-way street it turned out to be. I feel like I didn't ever really know her. But you know what? At this point, I don't think it matters. She lied to me so much. She lied to so many people so much. I just don't care anymore. I don't think there's anything left to this friendship to fix. And the worst part? I genuinely don't know how much of this is true. Maybe she's being completely honest with me.

Maybe she lied about everything and we're still playing 4D chess. Who knows? I certainly don't. And that, more than anything, is why this friendship is over. Because even if I could forgive everything, I can never really trust her. Then OP posted an update. Well, realizing just how much Emma lied about me, it occurred to me that almost everything I know about Emma's husband, Dave, comes directly from her. And by this point, I suspect that she might not be the most honest conveyor of events, so I took a risk and texted Emma's

husband Dave to meet up. We had a long talk, and who knows if it's a lie, but he says he never actually cheated on her, though she often accused him of that. And that innocent mistake that Emma made with his family? Yeah, she felt that his cousin's wife was being a bit too familiar with Dave, and started actively spreading the rumor that the kid was his, maliciously. This understandably caused a huge backlash and was one of the many things that caused Dave to want to leave.

The interaction with me in that context was just the final straw. So anyways, Dave is fighting for full custody of their kids, so that can get really ugly. We talked for a long time and he seems to be a pretty good guy. Though I have been wrong before, no kidding OP. And I offered some support because, well, having read my post, you can probably assume what divorcing Emma is like. He's worried about it and I understand him completely. So I offered to support him as best as I could and I'll probably

continue to do so. So as for my friends, I basically explained everything to them. This started some conversation, a lot of tea was spilled, and some realizations were made regarding the fact that a lot of drama that plagued our group over the years could actually be attributed to misunderstandings caused by Emma. More tea ensued. My wife is having a blast. I don't want to demonize Emma. I don't think that she was evilly cackling as she tried to ruin lives. I just think she's a very troubled person, and I still hope that she finds peace in friends and relationships that would help her through whatever the hell she's going through. And most of all, a good therapist. But this is no longer my circus and she is no longer my monkey.

I hope she does all that the hell away from me. As for my wife, here things get a little tricky. See, my wife confessed that she and Dave were having an affair all this time, so we're getting a divorce. I'm kidding about the last part, of course. God, could you imagine? No, my wife is awesome and remained awesome. Since the situation seems to be mostly resolved, she's now allowed to tease me about it. Which, she has been, a lot. Yo, the top post? This is like going outside to shoe what you thought was a squirrel away from your bird feeder and finding an adult grizzly bear instead. It escalated so quickly. What the hell?

Yeah, what's so weird about this is Emma was like an evil Machiavellian manipulator mastermind. But in the end, she revealed her mastermind plot to her victim. Why didn't she keep her mouth shut and continue to play the you know, sympathy nice girl card? How is that supposed to be sexy? Oh, by the way, I've been lying to you for like two decades and manipulating you ever since we first met. And all of our friends hate you now because I lied to them. So you wanna, I don't know, you wanna go Netflix and chill or something? Her next Reddit post comes from r slash relationship advice. I'm a 22 year old woman and my boyfriend is 26.

We've been together for around 4 years. He recently asked me if he could get a personal loan under my name so that he could buy a Halloween costume. To explain the current situation, he currently has around $5,000 worth of debt and doesn't have a job and lives off of payments from the government currently. When he originally asked, I got quite upset since for the last year, his financial situation has continued to get worse.

As I currently pay for his groceries and essentials and without aid, he doesn't have basic essentials like toilet paper or soap, let alone food. And he can only make the payments of his rent at the moment. When he asked me for the loan, it was about $1500. He wanted me to open the personal loan since no financial lenders would give him any more money. I don't know why I felt like this was my breaking point, but I just cried and told him that he was childish for asking

me for money to buy something so stupid, so I haven't spoken to him for the last couple of days. He asked me for money when he already relies on me to buy his groceries and is in so much debt from buying video games and action figures that I'm struggling to figure out what to even say to him. The reason he wants to borrow so much from me is for more of the same old non-essential stuff that got him into debt in the first place. A custom-made Halloween costume seems like an outrageous thing to want to purchase in his current situation, but he doesn't see it as a big deal since, in his words, it's not a lot of money for you, and I just need advice on

what approach might work to help him understand. You know what's funny about this post so far is that this was originally posted July 25th. So August, September, October, that's three full months that this guy could have just worked, gotten a job to pay for this thing. Also it shows a incredible amount of like foresight to plan for the future and yet this guy can't scrounge up enough money to feed himself. Anyways, OP posted an update.

I know I seem like an absolute idiot, but I think being with my boyfriend for so long as well as since high school made me feel extremely attached and like I wouldn't know what to do if he wasn't around. So in that way, I was definitely dependent on him. To clarify, the money was for a Spider-Man costume and no, I did not give him the money. I spoke to him and he tried explaining that it was his cousin who forced him to ask me for the money, which I didn't believe and I ended the relationship since a lot of your comments made me realize that I have a seriously low standard for

my dating pool and I'll have to reconsider my standards moving forward. I guess the reason I indulged this man for so long was because I felt pity for him and his situation. He lives off government disability payments due to having autism, ADHD and severe clinical depression. And I think as we progressed in our relationship, I slowly became his carer after his family moved on, so he had no one to take him to his appointments, especially after COVID. Back then, his carer quit, so he didn't have someone to help him during his day-to-day tasks. Anyways, I've broken up with my boyfriend.

I'll try to listen to you guys and find someone who's more on my level of stability and self-reliance. Also, I love this comment. LMAO girl, come on, have some respect for yourself. This man is already a clown, he doesn't need a costume. That was r slash best of redditor updates, and if you liked this content, be sure to follow my podcast because I put out new reddit podcast episodes every single day.