My husband undermines me in front of my family. I don’t know what to do anymore.

32 comments

1. >He does things like this frequently

   On these other occasions, are they also situations where you are telling people things that did not happen?

2. Is there *anyone* in your life that you unambiguously enjoy being around?

3. Was he right tho? Your post seems to dance around that. My mom is someone who will say literally anything in a conversation, zero regards to truth as long as it fits her narrative/agenda. It’s exhausting and grating to hear fantasy stated as truth all the time. Even white lies…like, why? Why can’t you just be quiet instead of making things up (this directed at my mom)? I get not wanting him to call you on things in front of family. But if you are in fact “wrong” (in my mom’s case lying/fantasizing) about stuff so consistently that it has him pushing back, I get him on some level.

4. >It felt like he had to just stomp on my opinions/thoughts just to be right. He does things like this frequently.

   Have you tried not being wrong about factual statements?

   >Husband contradicted me in front of my family when we were discussing wedding cakes. Not sure why

   Because you were wrong.

5. You tried calling him out, the person that has been there for you, in front of your family, the people who have made your life hell. Hence the word tried. If I know 1000% that I am right and someone is telling me I’m wrong, when there is proof, damn right I’m gonna fight tooth and nail to prove it.

6. >and who gives a f*ck about which cake we had when we got married 3 years ago?

   Well, you seemed to think your family would give a f*ck what kind of cake you had.

7. Conversations are not matches that someone wins and another loses. Your husband contradicted you because you lied (even if not in purpose). You could have said

   – Hm, now that you’re so sure about it, you’re making me doubt myself

   When first contradicted. You could have said:

   – Oh, I guess you were right, sorry about it

   When your husband found the receipt.

   But you didn’t, and I’m assuming that it was because you were treating the conversation as a match, and you lost the match and felt humiliated in front of people that you have a rocky relationship with. Correcting people when they’re wrong is not rude, it’s just normal dialogue.

8. Can’t believe I spent 5 mins of my life to read this

9. YOUR MAN GOT TRIGGERED.

   HIS WEDDING DAY GOT RUINED BY YOUR FAMILY.

   Kudos for YOU forgiving your parents and letting it go. BUT YOUR MAN IS STILL EXTREMELY BITTER ABOUT IT AND I DONT BLAME HIM.

10. This is exactly how my husband and i would have handled it. If i said X Actor was in this movie, and he said No, i dont think so. He or i would go look it up. He would be right (Because he is Always right when it comes to actors/movies/tv shows. hahaha) And i would say oh wow, you are right! HE might even go further and try and find the movie or actor i was confusing it with.

    Nothing about this situation is rude or uncalled for.

    “who cares about which cake we had when we got married 3 years ago?”- Clearly you do, because you started a fight about it and insisted he was wrong. I agree with the other comments that this is about it being in front of your family, who you are trying to put on a show for.

11. Sounds like both you and your husband like to argue. You said it yourself: Who cares what cake you had 3 years ago!?

    In any case I would have just said something like ‘Weird, I remember things differently but who knows?’ and forgot about it. Like, there are a million more important things to actually spend time caring about.

12. So, if I can reframe this story, you were lying to your family and your husband corrected you. You think this was rude of him. Is that the gist of it?

13. So you are upset that you lied and he corrected you?

    Maybe stop making shit up and he won’t call you on it?

14. He was just correcting you. Why did you push back? Why did you need to be right?

    When we’re raised by toxic/abusive parents, we can sometimes pick up their bad behaviors and not understand how to interact well with other people.

    He didn’t do anything wrong in letting you know that you were misremembering, but you got defensive.

    It’s ok to be wrong, and it isn’t insulting someone to let them know that they’re wrong. It’s often seen as a helpful thing to do. You should find out why you find it embarrassing to be wrong. You’re letting it effect you more than it should.

    I would recommend limiting contact with your family and going to therapy to work on the behaviors you learned from them.

15. Honestly, you sound exhausting.

    Worry more about your emotionally abusive family and less about your husband…correcting your MISTAKE. He did not undermine you, he corrected you. Sucks to be wrong. Deal with it and redirect your annoyance to the right parties and issues.

    Your comments are also…bizarre and a bit nonsensical. You’ve also stated he “belittled” you, “called (you) out”, he was “disrespectful” and “rude” and my personal favourite: “threw (you) under the boss”. This is a very basic (and boring) story and interaction and if you think this is an issue, you need to work your own self esteem issues out.

16. From your TL;DR – “Not sure why and I’m frustrated.”

    The why is because you were wrong. Not intentionally but what you want him to agree the sky is green just because you said it? I don’t think this was undermining at all.

    Your point about the sheet cake can still be true without you having done it personally.

    You also say he does things like this frequently any other examples? Are they also things where you’re at odds with reality?

17. There’s a Bluey episode about this.

    It boils down to: do you want to be right, or do you want a good marriage? Because it sounds very much like you’re both locked in on being right like its a score-keeping issue. You both need to lose this mentality and he needs to save the contradicting drama for when you’re not “in public”.

18. You were giving information to help someone else make a decision. Cakes aren’t a small expense. You gave them the wrong information about a decision you had made in the past, and your husband gave the correct information. His looking it up might very well point at something you’re not telling us, such as your reaction towards him when he’s right.

    Your best option was to say “Thanks for looking that up, it was such a hectic day, I’m sorry I didn’t remember correctly.” He wasn’t doing anything mean to you, he was making sure your sister had the right information for her decision.

19. There’s a couple of places where this conversation likely went in a poor direction and without being there I’m not sure where it was. I kind of understand why he did what he did with the receipts, because it sounds like you were pretty aggressive at contradicting his contribution to the discussion. Even though you felt corrected, in saying “no it wasn’t” so stridently you were actually correcting him, and the insistence of it probably made him feel like you were calling him a liar in front of everyone. So he felt the need to prove that, no he didn’t just randomly say this to disagree, you actually got the bigger cake, that’s why he said it. He needed to defend himself from the accusation you made on his character (in his mind). And since it was in front of everyone he couldn’t be vindicated by just hashing it out in private. A way to head off this kind of conflict in the future would have been to respond not with “no we didn’t get that cake”, but something more like “did we? I thought we got the sheet cake”.

    But the manner in which he contributed his differing memory matters as well. Why did you feel so belittled? Was he being aggressive and condescending when he first said this thing? Because there’s important differences between aggression, vs. saying something like “did we? I thought we got a full cake” or “naw dude it was the big cake”. An aggressive and belittling manner of correcting isn’t appropriate to the discussion, firstly because this wasn’t some malicious lie you’re telling, you’re just misremembering, and also, because this conversation isn’t ALL ABOUT YOUR WEDDING. It’s someone else’s wedding ideas that’s the focus, and derailing it with this argument probably made everyone wonder wtf, who cares what cake you guys had? There’s times to attack misinformation, like if someone is trying to scam a benefit or something. Why is he trying to “prove” you’re some malicious liar? What evil victory was there to be gained by lying over a cake and why does he think this of your character?

    Both of you sound like you may trend in the direction of percieved authority/respect is more important than facts. If you each cared more about the facts you wouldn’t get so wound up in the ego part of these conversations and wording things so accusatorily.

20. It’s not being undermined to correct you when you’re incorrect 🤷‍♂️.

21. So he was right? About the cake being large not just a smaller one and a sheet cake? And he had photo proof? But your upset because he did drop it and back your lie? Do you lie a lot?

22. Do you have any other examples of how he undermines you?

23. I’m sorry you were blatantly wrong and you’re mad he didn’t let you say something incorrect? This sounds like you are incapable of being wrong…

24. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that your family views being factually wrong about some minor detail as a massive personal failing worthy of contempt and mockery. Being wrong, however slightly, makes you vulnerable in front of them. They would probably point out someone’s factual mistake **in order to belittle them**. Motive matters. Your husband had no such motive and was probably confused about why you were reacting in an unusual way. Meanwhile you experienced it as your husband putting you in a vulnerable position in front of your family full of unsafe people.

    You were insisting he was wrong because of your need to be right in front of your family, so you feel safe. He was insisting because he knew he was right and had no understanding of the underlying emotional dynamic. It is very disorienting and uncomfortable to have our partner insist on a false version of reality and then get pissed when we show objective proof. Extreme versions of this are called gaslighting, but it doesn’t sound like you went anywhere nearly that far. You got caught in an awkward social moment with dysfunctional family members and he didn’t realize your normal emotional priorities don’t apply around your family. I’m sure when you guys are alone or even around friends, this little mixup would have been something you chuckle about.

    Probably the most useful lesson here is to see just how quickly being around your dysfunctional family can mess with your relationship. Kudos for limiting your contact with them! Because this definitely strikes me as a family problem, not a husband problem. Just being around them had you convinced that a simple ordinary fact-check of your shared experience was a sign that your husband belittled and betrayed you.

    You could try to manage this in the future by explaining he should never correct you in front of your family, even if he knows you are wrong, but do you really want to go down that road? If you both have to walk on eggshells just to endure time with your family, maybe that’s a sign that it’s not worth putting yourself into that situation.

25. > Husband contradicted me in front of my family when we were discussing wedding cakes.

    Husband *corrected* you. Either don’t be wrong, or get over being corrected.

26. This isn’t undermining you. You were just embarrassed to be wrong in front of your family. It’s ok to be wrong, it’s not that serious.

27. What do you do when he brings up evidence that you were wrong? It seems these disagreements are often over facts. So did you say “oh, wow, you’re right. I can’t believe I didn’t remember our wedding cake” or did you brush it off as something he shouldn’t care about?

    because look, it’s not about being right in this situation it’s about being accurate. This isn’t an issue of opinion. I had a friend who I would fight on factual things like this, and when I’d show proof- one example was whether a bar we liked was in The Valley or in a different neighborhood- she’d just brush it off like it doesn’t matter. But it does matter. Because she invalidated my feelings, AND ignored fact. Like if you can’t even own that you’re wrong when looking at a map of the bar 5 miles south of anything even remotely labeled The Valley, how can you own other things?

    I just obviously feel that you may not be seeing how your husband’s point of view isn’t that he’s undermining you or disrespecting you, rather he cares about factual truth and he is hurt when you don’t recall or acknowledge your mistake.

28. He didn’t stop on your opinions to be right, he told you you were wrong when you were wrong. What cake you had was not an opinion

29. Is there a chance that it isn’t necessarily the fact that he corrected you. But that it was in front of your dysfunctional family? I think that’s what really triggered on this occasion more than others.

    But even so, without the family situation. What I’ve understood about a lot of women, is that they want guys who sometimes just listen, rather than correct. They are emotionally-charged beings (for good reason in society), abd men are natural problem-solvers and want to naturally assert their leadership in situations to protect and head the family (also valid). Sometimes this spills over into doing it too often when not required, and he starts correcting when he doesn’t really need to.

    This is where communication does become important. If it’s obviously bothering you, then perhaps confront him while its happening. Instead of leaving it till later. Sometimes guys will realise after and then proceed to do damage control, as opposed to changing the behaviour in the first place. Also consider that it could a little bit of overreaction on your part too. It’s honestly seeming like that to me. He doesn’t have to correct you, and you didn’t have to overreact. It’s a little fault on both of your behalfs.

30. Am I reading this right? You were wrong about the cake, insisted you were right, he got evidence (which is sometimes the only way to stop an argument) and you dismissed it with “who cares” instead of apologising and acknowledging your mistake? And he’s rude? Um… no.

    This isn’t an opinion; it’s something you’re claiming happened. This isn’t room for opinion; it either was a sheet cake or it wasn’t, and the fact that you’re trying to make this “how rude, I can have my own opinion, stop trying to be right” is super insufferable, OP.

    You made a mistake, you won’t own it and now you’re mad at your partner for calling you out? Hell no. You owe him an apology.

    It sounds like you don’t want your husband to point out your mistakes or inconsistencies in front of your family and I’m wondering why. I think perhaps you’re embarrassed that you can’t remember your own wedding cake and are trying to divert the attention elsewhere, but I could be wrong.

31. You seem to be trying to paint him as the one who is making the issue more important than it should be and refusing to drop it, but from an outside perspective, it absolutely seems like you are the one who is taking the subject way too seriously. There’s probably something else at play here as far as your feelings about the situation goes that you should try to get to the bottom of.

32. You’re in the wrong here. You gave inaccurate information. He gave the correct information. You did not believe him. He provided proof. And you still got mad. So you attempted to gaslight him and then when he had the proof you got angry. Sounds like you might need therapy. Because this is borderline abusive to your husband.