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The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/Waste-Gap4481 on 2023-09-25 02:16:57.
I’ll try to keep this short and to the point. My wife of 7years has always had this odd quirk about her where she … without sugar coating it , likes to copy others. I’ve attempted to softy talk to her about it but it’s been a trigger for her because her parents always got on her about being a “follower”.
This tendency of hers has blown up between her friends because of their patience with it running out. When I say copy others some examples off the top of my head are 1) she will completely switch up her lifestyle to match someone she just met or is becoming friends with. After going out only one time with her coworker she came home with this desire to get her nose pierced. I’ve known her for 9 years. Never in that span of time has she shown interest in that. This is common with her. 2) She tends to act like she originated ideas that others share with her and will “forget” it was mentioned. 3) She will buy exactly what her friends have. Same color, same model…exact product and say she liked it for a long time and never wanted to buy it till recently. When talking about this stuff she often replies with “ehh I don’t know, I don’t care”.
This leads to the issue that blew up. Her friend I’ll call her Anna decorated her porch for fall recently. My wife liked it and the next few days basically replicated our porch into Anna’s porch. Apparently in their group chat things blew up and they accused her of constantly copying them. They share themes with each other through that Pinterest app so I guess it was long known what all of them were planning. Anna is annoyed that she put a lot of time into the decor only for it to be “stolen”. She presented me the argument and I was honest and agreed that our porch is in fact similar to Anna’s porch. The wreath is the same product. Pillows the same. Pumpkins. All it. I can’t deny it , however I don’t think it’s worth all this fighting. I then suggested maybe switch it out with different colors than what Anna did and just say she admired her work and didn’t mean to offend her. I thought that would be a simple answer to this petty issue.
My wife blew up and asked why I didn’t just marry Anna since her work is so nice. Reddit , I wasn’t trying to make this damn thing worse. Maybe I f*cked up and if so I’ll own it. But I genuinely thought being honest would maybe give her a different perspective and end the issue . It gave her the wrong perspective. She still ain’t speaking to me.
Edit : Thank you all for the helpful insight Didn’t realize this is something to consider therapy about. Makes sense. A lot of sense. Will definitely be talking to her about it. She’s always been against it in the past but I will try to approach it differently.