You think you know the person you sleep next to every night. You’ve seen them handle a bad day at work, a stressful family dinner, a minor crisis. You trust that when a real storm hits, they’ll be your rock.
But a true tragedy can really test a relationship, revealing a complete stranger. When grieving the loss of his mother and aunt, one man turned to the person who was supposed to be his comfort, his girlfriend. She had a very different, and very shocking, role in mind for him.
More info: Reddit
A person’s true character is revealed in the depths of a crisis, when their fight or flight response kicks in
Image credits: Getty Images / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
A man was devastated after losing his mother and his aunt in the same week, a truly heartbreaking set of circumstances for anyone to handle
Image credits: freepik / Freepik (not the actual photo)
He turned to his girlfriend for support, but she told him to ‘be a man’ and console her instead
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Stunned by her cruelty, he distanced himself and then eventually ended the relationship
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She begged for forgiveness for her ‘one mistake,’ but he saw it as a ‘fundamental breach of trust’
A man was navigating the darkest moment of his life. In the span of just three days, he lost both his mother and his close aunt, a double-barreled tragedy that left him completely devastated. He turned to his girlfriend of a year and a half, the person who was supposed to be his rock, for comfort and support.
But the rock he was leaning on turned out to be a human-shaped empathy vacuum. Her response to his grief was an ill-advised takedown of his masculinity. She told him to “be a man,” to take his sadness to his friends, and then, in a move of spectacular narcissism, demanded that he should be consoling her because she had lost her “future mother-in-law.”
Stunned by this profound lack of compassion, the man did what any sane person would do: he emotionally checked out. After a period of distance, he met up with her, explained how deeply she had hurt him, and ended the relationship. Her reaction was nothing but victim-blaming. She cried, begged, and then explained that her cruel comments were just a “mistake” made because she felt “ignored” during his time of grief.
He is trapped in a classic head-vs-heart battle. He’s wrestling with her seemingly sincere apology, but he can’t shake the feeling that her reaction was a horrifying glimpse of her “true colors.” He’s now asking the internet if it’s possible to ever come back from a betrayal that profound.
Image credits: Getty Images / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
The girlfriend’s reaction was a very harmful misunderstanding of how men process grief. As explained by grief experts, “masculine grief” often manifests differently from “feminine grief,” with men sometimes expressing their sorrow through action, anger, or silent withdrawal rather than tears.
Her demand for him to stop grieving and instead console her was a complete invalidation of his emotional experience, punishing him for not grieving in the way she expected or wanted. Her use of the phrase “be a man” is also particularly damaging, as it’s a cornerstone of what experts on gender studies refer to as “toxic masculinity.”
This concept is a set of harmful societal pressures that demand men be stoic, suppress their emotions, and avoid showing vulnerability. By weaponizing this phrase against him in his most vulnerable moment, she was using a toxic cultural script to demand he perform an outdated version of masculinity for her benefit.
The OP was having a real “true colors” moment. A person’s character is not defined by how they act when things are easy, but by how they respond in a crisis. Her immediate, self-centered reaction revealed a fundamental lack of empathy, one of the biggest red flags around. Luckily he caught on before it was too late!
How do you think he should have responded? Kick her to the curb or keep on trying? Share your thoughts in the comments!
The internet overwhelmingly declared her behavior a massive red flag and urged him not to take her back
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