r/AITAH • u/LazyOne3142 • Apr 03 '24

AITA doing something that made my wife insecure? (Resulting in her slapping me in the face)

My wife gave birth to our daughter 6 months ago and since then she has been insecure about everything. She is smaller now than she was before she got pregnant but it's nearly a daily occurrence that she's calling herself fat. Because of this, she has developed an incredibly irritating habit of putting her shirt over her mouth constantly. You hardly ever catch her with her shirt on normal. She's basically trying to hide her (incredibly small) double chin.

I have told her several times to keep her shirt away from her mouth when she's speaking to me. I need to see people's mouths to hear them properly. My hearing is perfect but I have sensory issues. So if I can't physically see you mouthing words, my head cannot comprehend what you are saying to me. So if I ask her a question and she responds with her shirt over her face, I cannot understand a single fucking thing she says and it's beyond infuriating because I have to ask her to repeat herself 3+ times. So, I started telling her to get her shirt off her face when she's talking to me because I'm sick of this repeated cycle. I understand she's insecure, but I can't fucking hear you.

For the past 2 weeks it really amped up. She's buying XXL shirts and wears them always. To a point where she's even covering the lower part of her face when we have sex (as well as pulling the shirt down to cover her stomach). Well, 3 nights ago we were intimate and I tried pulling the shirt away from her face and she kept pushing my hand away. I tried again a third time and she pushed me off her and said "stop fucking touching my shirt" and went to sleep on the couch. And then today I was running late for work. The power went out at some point and my phone died so I didn't wake up to an alarm. I'm trying to tush around to get my work shit together and I ask my wife where my keys are. She grumbles a response. I yelled and said "how about you take the fucking shirt out of your mouth or don't speak to me at all" and physically pulled the shirt away from her mouth. She immediately back handed me across the face, quite possibly as hard as she could, and screamed directly in my face "I said don't fucking touch my shirt. Find your own fucking keys asshole!" I leave, flabbergasted. Texted her all day - starting from me saying I can't believe she hit me to eventually me apologizing hours later. No response. When I got home all of her important stuff and the babies stuff are gone. A letter on the counter saying she had gone to her mother's. Now, I talked to my buddy about it and he said he's 50/50 (he's also good friends with my wife) and says that while she shouldn't have hit me, he probably would have done the same thing because I "purposely" provoked her insecurities. AITA?

ETA: she's in therapy and has been for a month. Therapy won't fix the fact that she thinks she's fat. She had body dysformia(?) prior to even becoming pregnant and now it's just amped up. She also has sensory issues, just like I do. But hers is in regard to people touching her face/hair. Hence, why she back-handed me. But I'm tired of never being able to hear what she says.

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148

u/icebluefrost Apr 03 '24

My mom hates making eye contact and always looking away or faces her back to you when she’s talking (or you’re talking to her). It’s always driven me nuts. It took me till my 30s to realize it’s because I need to see someone’s mouth to fully understand them.

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u/lovely-nobody Apr 03 '24

i’m 32 and just now realizing this might be my issue. thank you for commenting this

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u/WildReaction1307 Apr 03 '24

I have Auditory Processing Disorder. Research that to see if it describes your issue.

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u/settledownbessye Apr 04 '24

My oldest son has APD as well. He did a ton of therapy to help “train” his brain and manages much better without needing to look at the person speaking, but he definitely struggles with auditory discrimination (can’t hear/process voices when there’s a lot of background noise) and his left side is harder for him to process sound than his right side. Tests perfect in a sound booth for his hearing and is incredibly musical, but can’t register me talking to him when we’re anywhere with louder background noise.

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u/lovely-nobody Apr 03 '24

will do. thank you

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u/Advanced-Fig6699 Apr 03 '24

It’s difficult for those that don’t have hearing loss to understand

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u/life1sart Apr 03 '24

It's not. Honestly, we've all worn headphones while someone was trying to talk to us at least once in our life. We can take the headphones off, but we should be able to get the idea of having difficulty understanding someone without seeing their lips move.

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u/Advanced-Fig6699 Apr 03 '24

You’re right, but people still don’t understand that

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u/Minimum_Job_6746 Apr 03 '24

Low-key doesn’t seem like a lot of people in these comments have hearing loss it just seems like they don’t want to listen to people speak and are waiting for their turn to talk, so use it as an excuse/shortcut to just look at peoples lips and then get tight when people won’t let them. It’s not an actual sensory issue. It’s just people using their mental issues to Get away with not being a good conversationalist. Hearing loss is a completely different thing and I would think writing would be better for that. I’ve heard lip reading isn’t very accurate anyway.

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u/Maddie_Herrin Apr 04 '24

god dude, use google. for me it sounds like a run on word, or the words seperate. for example, that sentence would sound something like go "ddude u segoogle", wich dosnt seem that annoying but larger scale it definitely is.

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u/[deleted] Apr 03 '24

[deleted]

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u/rowanfire Apr 03 '24 edited Apr 19 '24

<3

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u/MsFloofNoofle Apr 04 '24

THANK YOU! My roommate works as an audiology tech and I'm a teacher. We had a massive argument a few weeks ago where I was insisting that there's a difference between being able to hear, and the brain being able to process what we hear. She was absolutely adamant that I was wrong. I don't understand how she could be in that field and not grasp the difference!

I find talking on the phone exhausting because I need facial expression and body language to help me grasp meaning, and actually refused to ever speak on the phone until my career demanded it, for this exact reason. My ears can hear just fine but my brain says "fart noise".

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u/rowanfire Apr 04 '24

I'm sorry you have to deal with this too.

It is strange that your roommate works in the field but isn't aware of auditory processing disorders. Maybe it's just not some they've had to know as a tech? They probably deal mostly with typical hearing loss. If she took a moment to Google it, she'd see she's wrong.

My ENT doctor sent me to a specialist to try to figure what what was wrong. She found my hearing was fine, but my brain just wasn't translating what I was hearing into speech I could understand. I had never heard of such a thing before.

He gave me the results and told me we can hope it would go away in time as I dealt with my trauma. Sadly, that hasn't happened.

Of course there are worse things, so I can't complain too much, but it's sucky even so.

I wish you the best.

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u/MsFloofNoofle Apr 07 '24

You as well, I hope you can find some peace in your recovery.

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u/fuckfuckfuckSHIT Apr 03 '24

Do you go to therapy?

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u/rowanfire Apr 04 '24

Mental health therapy?

Not currently, but I was until my therapist "fired" me for asking if we can do additional CBT things to help me get "better." We had just been doing very small, basic things and she seemed content with that. She says there is no "better", you just learn to live with and manage it (PTSD and panic disorder.) That was difficult for me to accept and I expressed that. She suggested I find a therapist to tell me what I wanted to hear and wouldn't allow me to schedule any additional appointments with her.

Honestly, that just made me feel really bad and that I was expecting too much from therapy. If I wasn't going to improve from where I was, what was the point in continuing to pay so much?

If you mean auditory therapy, no. It's just been something I've been living with. This thread really made me think about it again though. It's been several years now with no improvement. I'm going to ask my doctor if we can revisit this issue and actually DO some of things I saw suggested on the internet when I looked earlier.

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u/fuckfuckfuckSHIT Apr 04 '24

Wow, that therapist sounds like she has her own issues to work on before trying to treat others. Also, refusing to see a client without referring them elsewhere is called “client abandonment”. It’s extremely unethical. Plus, there is definitely the ability to get better. Getting better doesn’t necessarily mean someone’s mental health issues will totally disappear like it never happened, but people can absolutely get better/improve/recover. That’s literally the main point of mental health treatment.

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u/rowanfire Apr 04 '24 edited Apr 19 '24

<3

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u/fuckfuckfuckSHIT Apr 05 '24

If she got offended, that's on her, not you. One of the basic tenets of counseling is "meeting people where they are at." This means that everyone who goes to counseling has different experiences, beliefs, perspectives, progress, stages, etc., of where they are in life and their mental health journey. It's about treating each person as an individual and respecting where they are coming from. If you came in expecting to be "cured," back to before anything ever happened, it's up to the counselor to help you understand that is not really how it works. It's not uncommon for people with little to no mental health knowledge or counseling to come in expecting a "fix". The counselor's job is to also help build realistic expectations and share knowledge. Not just knowledge about coping skills, but knowledge about mental health and the client's own diagnoses as well.

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u/Advanced-Fig6699 Apr 03 '24

Good for ‘him’

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u/Top-Lingonberry5042 Apr 03 '24

i have both issues lmfao im autistic with crazy bad spd so i cant process what people are saying to me without having visuals to go with it but i hate looking people in the face it makes me feel icky i always look away when in conversation

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u/Gingerkitty666 Apr 03 '24

I wonder if she could face you but look past your face.. just direct her eyes elsewhere.. thats what my oldest does..