A man is concerned about his relationship with his live-in fiancée after they got in a big fight over home decor.
Taking to Reddit‘s “Am I the A–hole” forum, the 44-year-old man explained that he and his future wife got into a heated argument over some design decisions that she was making around the house.
He wants to know if he was in the wrong for how he behaved, and he’s also worried that the fight about pillows is indicative of a larger issue that has been popping up for weeks.
Keep reading to find out more…
In his post, the man said that he was “a pretty simple guy” who didn’t like a lot of extra accents around the house.
However, he actually liked it when his 43-year-old fiancée brought in some accent pillows for their bedroom when she moved in three years ago.
When they had a conversation about the design decision, he told her that he liked it but noted that he didn’t like to use pink and yellow around the house. He said he’s “just never been a fan” of pink but that yellow “triggers a very bad childhood memory.”
While he admitted to liking those early accent pillows, he was less enthused when his partner began bringing in “a bunch of pink pillows for the bedroom and living room.”
“It bothered me to no end. I figured I’d try to just get used to it, so I decided not to bring it up,” he wrote, adding that he’d been spending most of his time in their semi-converted garage, which has less pink pillows than his living room or bedroom.
The Redditor was hoping not to start a fight over the pillows, explaining that he and his partner had “been getting into fights almost every weekend lately” after he’d “say or do something stupid.
He noted that his fiancée “will go off on me, saying things like, ‘You don’t let me be a person.’ ”
Although he was hoping to avoid another fight, things escalated when he was directly questioned about why he was hiding out in the garage so much.
“Because she asked directly, I didn’t feel like lying. I told her the truth: I absolutely hate the pink in the living room and the bedroom,” he explained, saying that his wife again accused him of “not letting her be a person.”
He wrote that she “explicitly told me that she has decided my opinion no longer matters.”
Asking if he was in the wrong, he acknowledged that he had “answered a direct question” honestly, which he felt was justified.
However, he worried that “the typical pattern of our weekly arguments has created an environment where [his fiancée] feels so stifled that she is using decorative pillows just to reclaim her autonomy.”
Fellow Redditors weighed in, pointing out that there appeared to be issues on both sides.
“She shouldn’t have tried to bulldoze you and make decisions about decor unilaterally,” one person wrote, adding, “You, on the other hand – 6 pink pillows on a sofa is enough to make you not want to sit in a room? Are you serious?”
They concluded with a question: “Do either of you even like each other?”
Others agreed with the poster, but they sparked a conversation about the man’s behavior.
“Her saying ‘you don’t let me be a person’ sounds like there’s something else going on,” one person wrote, prompting another to agree that they were “really curious what other things he’s saying and doing that are stupid. He sort of added that in as a throwaway, but it may be relevant.”
Yet another person accused him of “burying the lead” in his post, writing, “He’s trying to make this all about pink pillows, when actually, it sounds like his fiancée thinks he’s controlling and feels it is suffocating living with him.”
Others stressed that this was clearly a relationship issue that needed to be worked out before anyone walked down the aisle.
“If this was a healthy, stable relationship this wouldn’t even be an issue. You’d have made decisions together and compromised to have colours and things you both like,” a Redditor wrote, adding, “It sounds like you guys need to talk about whatever the actual issue is or call it quits. This is clearly about much more than some stupid pillows.”
