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The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/Potential-Spend-3987 on 2023-08-11 08:17:54.
My wife passed away suddenly after giving birth to our daughter five years ago. My parents and sisters have spent the last four years telling me to move on.
I cannot.
You know how amputees get phantom pain in their missing limbs. It’s like that. Except it’s everything that’s missing. I took my daughter to a street performers festival in my city and my heart ached because I went to buy some kettle corn. I hate kettle corn. My wife loved it. I was buying something I hate for someone who isn’t there.
My mother did the cruelest thing I can imagine. She told my daughter that she should ask for a new mommy for her birthday.
I wasn’t polite in dealing with that. I told her that if her or my sisters ever tried to bring a woman into my life I would leave the city with my daughter and they would never see us again.
Now all three of my sisters and my father have called me to yell at me for threatening my mother and them. They say that they are only trying to help and that I’m an asshole for not accepting the inevitable.
lotanis@discuss.tchncs.de 1 year ago
It sounds like you have trauma from your wife’s passing. This is understandable, and the appropriate way to deal with it is therapy.
The appropriate way is NOT what your family did trying to force someone new on you. What they did is roughly equivalent to asking an alcoholic “have you tried just not drinking?”
I think your particular threat is the nuclear option, but I understand why you got there after they’ve been so inconsiderate.