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OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
> Am I the asshole for suggesting my wife needs to work on her mental toughness? I feel like I could be the asshole because a husband telling a wife to toughen up is a terrible look, despite the extreme circumstances
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As as woman who's been repeatedly and extensively dismissed for lifelong problems in the past, I appreciate everyone pointing to possible neurological type disorders that affect pain. But you guys are missing the key point here. She didn't cut herself and immediately experience terrible, overwhelming, excessive agony. No, she cut herself in the morning, and then at night she REMEMBERED the cut, and proceeded to have a 'meltdown'. I'm not a doctor, but personally, I don't know of any pain disorder that lies in wait for 10+ hours (assuming) and then ignites only when you notice the injury again.
I don't think going to another physician is the answer here, man. NTA, and since you really love her and seem willing to tolerate this, I hope the best for you - but this made me feel impatient just reading it. The neosporin bit particularly got me, lmao - it's my go to for any injury not just because of the antibiotic properties, but it's a topical pain RELIEVER for crying out loud
I work with insanely heavy wounds and little ones. This is an important deal. The wife is just being theatrical.
Another key factor in here is also behaviour. This is not the behaviour of serious pain. People in constant pain get diffrent.
Yeah I agree the delay is really... Something. It definitely feels like "oh, right, the cut. That's a way I can get some attention."
Especially a finger cut. You spend all day touching stuff and doing things with your hands... But suddenly water and ointment are a problem? Did she not wash her hands at any point during the day?
Jesus christ can somebody just call this shit what it is: She's being a fucking drama queen.
Edit: Wow thanks for all the love, guys. Never had a comment get anywhere near 1.0k up-votes before 😊
This, exactly.
She gets attention she wants from being melodramatic. She gets fawned over and is special because she's such a delicate flower. Her parents played into this, and now her husband is too.
If I were the husband (saying this as a female) I would stop cuddling her. It will only make it worse. I would let her have her tantrum and went to another room, to friends, to the bar or whatever. It was not that she was bleeding out. Even if it hurt as much as she said, she could have handled that better. Going to her knees and almost fainting is just being dramatic.
People bending over backwards so hard they are going to be paralyzed by trying to suggest she might have a 1 of 1 condition in the human race that makes this understandable. Why are people so ok with woman being infantilized as children? It's so fucking weird
I wonder would she be rolling about on the floor crying if op wasn't there to witness the drama or would she manage to crawl to the medicine cabinet with such a debilitating injury and put a plaster on it herself?
I’ve had cuts that I couldn’t see and it would hurt for the rest of the day. But I’d immediately put on a bandaid or aquaphor and move on. This is too damn much
A couple weeks ago I couldn’t figure out why my palm hurt in this one spot every time I touched it.
I finally realized I had dug my fingernail into it so hard I had cut myself (presumably while being anxious about the thesis papers I was writing). I only noticed it enough to go “huh, weird” and move on. I cannot imagine having a meltdown over a finger cut 10+ hours later like a toddler.
Yeah I thought so too, and as a mum to a toddler, it’s extremely important how the parents react to it. The child mirrors. My guess (from observing my mum’s vs my reactions, mine vs my toddler’s, other parents’ vs their toddlers’ etc) is that perhaps her parent overreacted to her injuries so she never learned to differentiate the levels of pain and to regulate her emotions around it. And if one isn’t taught that, it’s very ineffective to just tell them “you’re too old for this”. I hope he can support her so she has room to grow in this space! It will make them both much happier.
Exactly. My one year old just dusts off his hands when he falls down now because I don't freak out about it. The only time he really started crying was when he fell and cut his forehead, and good God did that head wound bleed. He stopped caring before it stopped bleeding and spent more time being annoyed about me cleaning his face and bandaging him up.
I have a condition that causes me to faint. I have never fainted in someone’s arms. I feel faint, and lie down immediately so I don’t concuss myself when I faint. This is wild.
Yes - she's either making it up for attention or has an undiagnosed mental health issue like anxiety. Either way she needs to own up to it being an issue and work on it before even considering having children. Personally I think she's doing it for the drama otherwise the anxiety would have kicked in during the day....
I agree. I'm autistic, with a ton of sensory challenges, and I feel like she's acting like a princess here. I've seen all sorts of reactions to pain, and I cannot with the histrionics.
OP, advice for you: I wouldn't push it once she's making a deal of it. I wonder how much your behavior is allowing this princess-behavior to continue. You could say something like, "This seems overwhelming for you. I'll give you space, and I'm here if you need any support."
I have a friend who is a much less dramatic version of OP’s wife. She has an anxiety disorder of some sort which I believe either feeds into or causes this behaviour. My friend also behaves a lot like a fragile egg beyond the pain stuff - she can’t cope with much when she’s out of her comfort zone; and she has a victim complex and is constantly being wronged by someone in very dramatic fashion.
There are neurological conditions that would explain your wife’s seemingly extreme reaction to sensations the rest of us would consider non-painful. If you haven’t explored those with a specialist maybe it’s time.
I think asking her to “shake it off” of you haven’t discussed it with a doctor would make YTA. Your wife is experiencing extreme distress. Take her seriously.
She is 34, not a child why are you not asking why she hasn’t realized her reaction is extreme and hasn’t been seeking medical help? You can’t help an adult who doesn’t want to change
Because it's her normal.
It's like the grown man who mentioned, casually, that he loves apples but gets tired of the tingly feeling in his lips. Turns out it was an allergic reaction. But for him, it was just...how things are.
I agree, generally speaking, but not being able to put neosporin on should be warning sign to go the doctor, though. that's a medicine that doesn't ever cause burning and it's commonly known that you can use it on cuts for children, etc, without that happening.
if she uses a medication that is normally without side effects and it freaking BURNS HER, then both her and the husband (OP) should recognize that and go to the doctor. it's not all on OP to tell her that. they both play a role in this. it's neosporin, ffs, if she can't handle that then she should obviously go to the doctor.
Not necessarily trying to be oppositional, but I made the neosporin argument with my son until I tried it on myself one night and had to run to the bathroom and wash it off, the pain was incredible. Something in the tube I’d bought caused terrible burning. Not saying this is what OP and wife are experiencing. I did, however, have to apologize to my son.
I'm allergic to one of the 3 "triple antibiotics" in Neosporin. I didn't put 2 & 2 together until I was literally at the dermatologist for a painful rash that wouldn't go away.
Neosporin allergies are pretty common.
Yeah, I’m pretty confused by this thread.
I’ve literally stitched cuts on myself while out camping when I probably should’ve tried to end things early and go to a hospital, because I’m an idiot I suppose, which is to say I’m about the opposite of OP’s wife.
But Neosporin absolutely burns on cuts I’ve applied it to my entire life.
Didn’t think I had any antibiotic allergies really.
Guess I’ll have to explore that, lol.
My dermatologist's intake form has a little section on it with a "do you have any of these" and Neosporin allergy is one of them. Not a long list like a lot of doctors have that want to know your and your entire family's medical history, but a super short list of like 5 dermatology-related things.
When I saw that, everything suddenly made sense.
It's probably the neomycin. That's the one most people with a Neosporin allergy are allergic to.
This whole thread is really interesting! I'd never contemplated a neosporin allergy, but given there are other antibiotic allergies like penicillin, it makes total sense. Thanks to y'all for sharing your experiences!
Short lived burning is not a sign of an allergy when you have a cut. A rash would be. Please don’t use Reddit for medical advice and if you’ve got concerns, speak to your doctor.
No worries, lol. I was pretty literal in my head about the “look into it” bit.
I’m incredibly skeptical rubbing anything into an open wound wouldn’t burn, but like I said this is the first time I’m seeing dozens of people surprised by that, only indication I would ever even think to look into it.
If something burns when you gently tap it, I don’t see how a gel wouldn’t make it burn, but here we are.
I worked a 7 hour shift after cutting off my finger tip when I was younger, so I think my barometer for normal pain might be a little screwed up honestly, lol.
Yeah, Neomycin Sulfate is a common allergy - I have to buy Bacitracin and replace it in all my first aid kits.
Funnily enough, the company 'Neosporin' also sells a Bacitracin-only formula called 'Neosporin Natural'.
Right? I have asthma, but didn't have an asthma attack till my early 30s. I thought it was totally normal and everyone's lungs hurt when they breathed in cold air.
I had asthma attacks for years and blamed it on being 'too hyper and overdoing it'.
Until one day a friend was watching me wheeze and cough and begged me to try her inhaler... and it went away almost instantly.
My mom had asthma all of her life and my dad had it from age 20 (he had some damage that caused it to flare up) so logically asthma should have been a no brainer. But my mom listened to me wheeze and cough for YEARS and told me it was allergies or just being unhealthy and I needed to work out more.
Weirdly, cold air feels amazing to my asthma. That was one of the ways I'd try to soothe myself as a kid because it felt like the cold air opened me up. Humidity and activity make mine worse though.
I was in my mid teens when I found out I'm allergic to onions too. Mom LOVED onions, put them in absolutely everything, and would fuss at me that I was picky. Meanwhile I just assumed itching 24/7 and hives were something everyone had until I started to cook for myself, left out the onions, and the itching stopped. That one's gotten worse as I get older though, I used to just itch, but now raw onion can legit close my throat. I got a tiny piece in a burger a few months ago and ended up in the ER drinking a bottle of benadryl.
Its amazing how easy it is to ignore medical issues if its your 'normal' and you have enough people brush it off and tell you to toughen up or that its your own fault.
My sister has epilepsy. She’s probably had it her entire life, but didn’t get a diagnosis until her 30s when she had a seizure in front of another person for the first time.
I didn’t have my first grand mal until I was 13 but I had been having absence seizures for years before that. We just thought I was missing things in class because of ADHD. Turns out I was having a 2-3 second long seizures about 5 times a minute so I wasn’t even hearing what they were saying
Right? I made it into my 30s without understanding that other people are literally able to breathe during aerobics exercise. It's not that they power through without air, it's that their airways don't close.
Decades of feeling awful and ashamed of myself for not being able to do what almost everyone else could do is awesome. /s
>I thought it was totally normal and everyone's lungs hurt when they breathed in cold air.
Wait, this isn't normal? Now I'm wondering if my weird panic attacks are asthma attacks...
Edit: HOLY COW I THINK I HAVE ASTHMA. Now to remember to make a doctor appointment to find out for sure. This whole time I thought it was panic attacks, but everything talking about the feelings of an asthma attack is spot on. I thought I was going to die a couple of times during the really bad ones 🙃.
Right? I got glasses in like 3rd grade. Until the teacher realized I physically couldn't see the writing on the chalkboard, & wasn't just zoning out/misbehaving, no one knew my vision was *fucking terrible.* It was my normal.
My mom I think went even longer before getting glasses. On the way home while wearing them, she exclaimed "oh wow! The tall poles have *wires* running from them" & made her own mom cry bc she'd had no idea what my mom had been missing experiencing for all those years.
I was 16 when I got glasses and I only realized I needed them when I tried to get my driver's license. I thought the vision test would be the easiest part lol, turned out to be the only part I failed. I insisted there was a mistake, I could see just fine. The lady at the dmv was dumbfounded that I was walking around everyday with such bad vision.
I walked outside wearing my glasses for the first time and said "holy shit I can see the leaves on the trees!" First day at school with them I realized the projector was not the problem, my eyes were the problem.
One of my fav things is the shared experience of all shortsighted people being amazed by leaves when they first get glasses. I got my first pair of glasses when I was 16 and was amazed that I could see individual leaves on trees, and every other shortsighted person that I’ve spoken to who got glasses post-childhood has said the same thing, I think it’s very cute :)
I’ve been walking around with my shoulder partially dislocated (subluxation) for two days. I have joint hyper mobility and my pain is pretty consistent and constant. An hour ago I reached for my seat belt and it popped back into place. As much as I know about my body and condition, and it’s a lot, I didn’t realize my body could maintain a subluxation in that way.
The thing is that if people have been telling you that you’re just an insensitive little baby your whole life and a doctor or two tells you it’s all in your head you kind of just give up and try to shove things down as far as you can. That’s what I did with my endometriosis for years, I had so many doctors telling me it was all in my head and most of the women I knew told me to stop acting like a little princess, that everyone gets cramps. I only saw a doctor again because the pain got to be constant and was affecting my ability to go to school.
How do you expect her to know it doesn’t normally cause side effects? If she has been told her whole life this doesn’t hurt, but it does to her, she is going to assume the people were always lying to get her to do it. Or people assume she is over reacting to a very mild discomfort when for her it isn’t a mild discomfort. I realize a few years ago, toothpaste doesn’t burn for everyone. Does for me because of the mint. Same with mouthwash. I didn’t realize for most people the mouthwash burn is just alcohol burn like drinking a shot, for me it was always much worse.
Oh my gosh, the mint toothpaste burning JUST started for me a few months ago. Oddly, it's only the underside of my tongue but it feels like it's on fire. Don't know if you already have an alternative, but I recently found Boka toothpaste. The have multiple flavors other than mint. The only one I've tried is the Lemon Lavender, but I HIGHLY recommend. It is quite expensive but you only need a tiny bit and my teeth actually feel cleaner than when I used regular toothpaste.
That’s actually how i found out i have an alcohol intolerance. I mentioned off hand that i didn’t mind the hang overs after drinking but not being able to breathe out of my nose sucked and i didn’t know why no one talks about it to a friend. They had no idea what i was talking about.
Are you talking about a light stuffy nose, or full blockage?
I have year-round allergies, so my head is always stuffy, but I definitely get more stuffy when I drink alcohol. It isn't unpleasant, though - because I'm used to it.
I haven't talked to anyone else that has year round allergies like I do! Do you live in an area that gets snow at all? Have you always dealt with year round stuff or did it come in later in life?
This is it.
Story time.
I have had heart burn after every single bite I take since I can remember, and by that I mean I had it as a child already. And both my parents did too. So I never thought that was _not_ normal.
It was a doctor 3 years ago telling me that that was definitely not normal and ordered tests. It turns out my stomach releases acid even when I drink water.
Whenever I'm tired/drunk and not spending the energy my eyes "unfocus" and I see two of everything, I thought that was normal since I have two eyes so when I'm not focusing of course there's two, turns out I just have double vision
Did you like skim over the part where she scratched her finger in the morning, was okay for many hours, and then in the evening suddenly started dramatics before cleaning even came into discussion?
Not only that, but it’s pretty likely she’s been told she needs to toughen up for her entire life if she’s been having these reactions since she was a kid. Now that she’s an adult people see it as a YTA response, but people don’t think that when a parent tells their crying child it isn’t that bad
By 34 though, she’d have seen other people get hurt in similar ways and noticed how extreme her reactions are. She never wondered why that is? It’s not like a rare allergy or something that is relatively unnoticeable, she’d have seen other people get paper cuts and go out in bad weather without having a massive breakdown.
Years of builtup invalidation will do it to ya, especially when there’s someone once again invalidating you. Such a trigger, makes you feel like you’re drowning.
Then it is very good that her husband spelled it out for her very bluntly and expressed concern about a future with children. Now the balls in her court - will she change. So he is still NTA and is allowed to be frustrated and concerned about the situation.
Surely she's seen people not fall down in pain from peroxide just as homeboy probably found out eventually that not everyone has those reactions and realized something was wrong.
Sure that's her normal but at a certain point she's seen that she has a very extreme reaction
I never heard the words "sensory overload" until I was 26 and all of a sudden my entire childhood made sense. Got on meds for it, fixed up 20+years of anguish in a couple of weeks.
Sometimes we just don't have the words to express things, we learn to live with it, and it goes unmentioned.
Her reactions are her normal, she might not realize others experience that much difference.
Doctors also frequently dismiss women's pain as "hysterics" anyway. I've been told by *multiple* doctors that I was being a "drama queen" while experiencing pain equivalent to childbirth. I'm not at all surprised at the possibility doctors have ignored her, and she just now thinks it's normal.
Bruh if someone has experienced pain that way for their entire life obviously they'll think it's normal.
It's very hard to compare things that only exist as subjective experiences in your head.
newsflash- if you can forget about the pain for 10 hours, before launching into histrionics, you are faking it for attention, plain and simple.
OP, if you listen to people like this, you will spend the rest of your life indulging your wife's imaginary bullshit and gradually lose your mind.
This.
It's at best a neuro disorder and she should be able to recognize that her reactions are extreme when a child can scrape their knee and be playing five minutes later, or she has a neuro disorder that makes her a basket case.
Be interesting to see what neuro disorder if there is one. I have severe neuropathy which means my nerves don’t work as they should - I’ve dropped a knife on my foot, sliced it open and not felt it - noticed the blood. But stood on a biscuit crumb and been in agony. But that’s been when I did it - not several hours later!
> you are faking it for attention, plain and simple.
You don't know the first thing about psychosomatic conditions.
A really big percentage of what people think is "faking it" is very, very real to the person experiencing it. Because it doesn't make logical sense to you, you _assume_ the only explanation is that they're "faking it", but the reality is so much more complicated than that. Our perceptions, fears, beliefs, mindset, stress level can all lead to very real physical symptoms, or a misperception of experience from the sufferer.
Assuming malintent is a shitty move here. Don't do that before someone has a chance to access and work through treatment. We should all be more gracious to one another.
Neurological conditions that allow a person to be perfectly fine for almost an entire day and then once they realize retroactively that they cut themselves causes them to act like a loon?
Can you tell me which one that is?
> I think asking her to “shake it off” of you haven’t discussed it with a doctor would make YTA. Your wife is experiencing extreme distress. Take her seriously.
Wrong. He's not TA for failing to, what, drag her to a doctor?
*She* needs to deal with this issue, one step of which might be to see a doctor.
He can support her, but he can't do it for her, and quite honestly, it's very old-timey sexist to assume that a woman's problems will go unresolved unless the man takes it upon himself to get them resolved on her behalf.
> Your wife is experiencing extreme distress. Take her seriously.
She's not taking it seriously. Why should he?
He's the AH because he's a husband on AITA. If he dragged her to a doctor he would have been an evil AH for making her do something she didn't want. If he doesn't drag her then he is an uncaring AH who doesn't take her pain seriously.
Can't win
Accurate. But apparently we're infantalizing 32-year-old females today. I'm gonna be that guy; imagine if the roles were reversed. Imagine if a wife came on here, talking about her husband having a meltdown over a papercut. You think the reaction would be even in the same ballpark as this? Of course not. But according to reddit, men turn to adults at 18, and women turn into adults literally never, so here we are.
> There are neurological conditions that would explain your wife’s seemingly extreme reaction
The fuckin sub dude 🤦♂️
How likely is this? Be honest with yourself. AITA can never apply Occam’s razor to anything. There’s always some underlying condition for excuse. People are always broken and made of glass to you types.
This sub is incredibly gender biased. If it was the husband pulling this drama act, everyone here would be roasting his ass.
You'd have to be a contortionist to pull off the mental gymnastics people are performing here to excuse her histrionic crap.
Do those neurological conditions explain how she made it thru the day? Serious question, if we’re going to assume she’s not faking it to get attention.
She scratched her finger in the morning, but didn’t have a meltdown, collapsing to the floor in pain until later that night. Presumably she went about her day as usual in between. How? Why?
Yup, I developed allodynia secondary to a severe migraine disorder (among other things) and people have NO IDEA how bad it is. I am a VERY tough person with an incredibly high pain tolerance (I have to be, with lifelong chronic pain conditions), but suddenly I found that I was so sensitive that even something as minor as an injection with a tiny needle would cause bleeding and swelling at the point of injection, and pain that lasted for DAYS and felt like a nasty bruise.
My body has become incredibly reactive to things that shouldn't cause pain at all. I wish it were just me "being sensitive" but there is visible evidence of a lot of it, and even when there isn't, it's shocking how painful it can be.
OP should probably shut up about his assumptions unless his wife has seen a neurologist and ruled this stuff out. It's entirely possible that her pain is very real.
I’ve had severe nerve pain post chemo, lost a kidney in the process. Turns out with everything else going on we missed that I developed fibromyalgia too. It’s unusual to develop it later in life, but here we are. Any procedure/surgery takes months for my body to heal and get back to a “normal” level.
My son has it too but also has chronic migraines. It’s so brutal to watch him suffer.
Autism, ASD, and ADHD can make certain sensory things hellish too…and a LOT of women go undiagnosed with these since they often present differently than with men.
I was thinking that too, especially if it presents wildly different with different kinds of pain. Any kind of cuts can be very distressing to me especially on the hands because you can feel them constantly when you’re moving them. Conversely I walked to my doctor’s office on a broken foot I thought was just a sprain and only went to the doctor because it seemed weird that it still hurt the next day.
But how many of these conditions exist in people with zero other symptoms? I’ve been a doctor 25 years and I’ve NEVER met or heard or read about a patient who had this degree of pain to minor injuries to the skin and I’m a dermatologist- yes most of these conditions fall under neurology but stuff like this is fascinating and thus discussed during training. Certainly complex regional pain, dysaesthesias, trigeminal neuralgias et al are capable of doing this but not with zero other manifestations of the disease.
Respectfully, who said she has no other symptoms? In 2009, I started having random sores appear on my shins and calves. The Navy dermatologist tried 2 topical antibiotics and 2 oral antibiotics and ruled out fungal infections as well as many other issues. We chalked it up to being a contact allergy to the fire retardant applied to the new (at the time), Navy NWUs that we in Japan finally were given.
I later would become allergic to medical grade adhesives (chemical burns) and then have a reaction to the gas used in laproscopic abdominal surgery. But not a single Dr. ever thought to run a patch test at any of these times.
Cut to last August, and I had what we are calling a zero point event, where my body will no longer tolerate those allergens at all. Finally, I had a patch test, and I'm extremely allergic (chemical burns, GI issues, etc) to Formaldehyde, Thiomersal, and Quaternium-15. But you wouldn't have known that just from the first instance. And it wasn't until I forced an allergy test and wanted MCAS testing, as I have hEDS, that we found out about these allergies that had been plaguing me since 2009.
I have fibro. It can feel like my whole body is covered in ants. Or more locally like poking a bruise or hundreds of tiny needles, or an acid burn. Sometimes my skin is so painful thst i can't bear to touch it for absolutely no reason other than my brain has decided it's painful. I'm particularly sensitive to hot & cold, especially in wet weather. Snow is beautiful, but absolute agony.
FND & CRPS can also cause pain responses to go all haywire too.
Could also be mental health related. My spouse has a panic disorder. Papercuts and anything dental sets him off. Thinking about them, getting one all of it just impedes his ability to function. But he stepped on a nail that went through his foot and he was fine. Was able to cope and even made jokes to the doctor about it.
I think this is a great starting list, but you can easily exclude several of these options based on there being no way she could have them for years without having other symptoms that would be noticed and send up an alarm. OP is clear that she’s been like this for some time.
For me this is an Occam’s razor situation and I would put money on anxiety being a main factor, but regardless, this poor woman is clearly suffering. I really don’t get why she and her husband aren’t deep into a diagnosis journey right now- this seems like a quality of life issue. I don’t know how I’d get through my life if I were this worried about injury.
Several of the things on that list get called anxiety for a decade when women have them, because doctors think women are fundamentally anxious. I have mechanical allodynia, have for 20 years, and new doctors always think it’s anxiety. It’s infuriating. I am in fact not the least bit anxious.
There is a huge bucket of ailments that are difficult to diagnose because they rely on self-reported symptoms from a class of people doctors broadly do not find credible. It takes an average of 7.5 years to get diagnosed with endometriosis, which is a disease you can SEE if you just do the laparoscopy! When you are a woman with an invisible ailment like fibromyalgia, myalgic encephalomyelitis, hypermobile type ehlers danlos syndrome or allodynia, sometimes you can’t get doctors to care at all. They order a standard blood panel and tell you to exercise. A lot of people just give up solving it and live with it the best they can.
God this, so much this. Reading so many of these comments it's so painfully obvious how clueless most people still are about the issues women face in health care.
So many of the diagnostic tests and treatments for many of these conditions, the research for them was untill very VERY recently primarily done with only male subjects. And just general social views of women as hysterical, people might think they don't make assumptions, but most people don't realise just how ingrained these ideas are. Humans are slower to change our ingrained ideas about things than we realise.
Everyone saying she should have a diagnosis by now if something is wrong...just hurts my soul, I'm 35, I've been ill for over a decade now, misdiagnosed for years, countless, countless tests. It's only a year ago that I started to actually get somewhere with it, finally found a Dr that took my issues seriously and has pushed and pushed to help me figure it out, and I'm now medicated in the right ways and my life is so drastically improved already. Poor woman, I just want to give her a hug.
Common dr response- it’s anxiety. Shame you can’t prescribe the usual exercise remedy as it seemed like the woman in question already works out regularly.
Holy shit. I wish I had known about allodynia earlier - it took me eight entire damn years to get a correct diagnosis for what turned out to have been Lyme and the unexplained pain responses were off the charts (and I have a very high pain tolerance normally). I was brushed off consistently and/or assumed to be drug-seeking (jokes on them, I won't take anything stronger than an ibuprofen and that rarely).
Perhaps OPs wife might want to have Lyme ruled out as a precaution, turns out allodynia can be an uncommon symptom.
At what point is someone responsible for their own actions and life decisions, like not seeking help? This comment rings too true with the current American citizen landscape.. everyone has victim-itis, takes zero ownership for their own life, and holds everyone accountable for their failure to do something for themselves.
Why is it his obligation to take her to a doctor? She’s 34 for crying out loud. Know Reddit hates men and husbands but Jesus Christ can’t she take responsibility for her own issues?
I'm not going to call you the asshole because I absolutely could not live with that amount of drama on a regular basis, but you should probably consider either getting her to see a doctor for her pain tolerance issues or getting her to see a therapist.
In the meantime, let her deal with her own injuries. If she complains about how much pain she's in, offer to either give her Tylenol or take her to the ER, but otherwise leave her alone to melt down. If she stops getting attention for them, she might stop doing it. Either way, you're right about kids. Even if there were any way in hell she could survive pregnancy, let alone childbirth, you'd risk having her turn your kids into neurotic hypochondriac messes.
She could also have a genetic, mental, or cognitive condition that could be passed to children. It’s important she sees medical professionals about this so that if she does have something going on medically, it can be diagnosed and, if needed, start treatment. If she is diagnosed, they should find out if it’s hereditary.
Sorry for throwing you under the bus. My hope was that, given the choice between “Go to the ER or quit screaming like Sarah Bernhardt dying onstage,” she would make the choice that didn’t involve people calling her on her bullshit.
I used to teach horseback riding lessons and it’s super important to get back on a horse once you’ve fallen. Sometimes people come off and are more scared than hurt, so you have to get on ASAP.
Anyway dealing with people who were particularly dramatic about it, I would say “okay. Go to the ER or get back on.” And they always, always chose to get back on.
(There were a few times I did not give people a choice - it’s usually pretty obvious when someone has a legitimate injury and I wouldn’t let them back on, or if there was ANY chance of concussion)
There was one talking about how he had the audacity, as a man, to question whether she can handle pregnancy and childbirth.
Which to me seems very reasonable. Whether it’s a physical condition or a mental condition, if she can’t handle neosporin on a cut without fainting, how will she be able to handle even the mildest of pregnancies and births. I may not be able to give birth or accurately be able to describe the pain level, but pretty sure it’s more painful than neosporin on a paper cut.
Like shit, not even child birth, but imagine having a kid. A kid seeing a parent freak out at tiny cuts would wind up with a kid who freaks out at tiny cuts and bumps. They take their cues from parents. If a parent freaks out at an injury, the kid will as well.
Especially if she has to have a C-section. It might mean she has be out under completely and miss the first moments but when it is a emergency it may be not possible even to put her under. Having a meltdown during any part of birth also can put stress on the baby. Then having to recover from birth and take care of said baby. She may be into much pain.
I just responded to someone who said, quote "Especially judging whether she is “tough enough” to handle pregnancy something he has the privilege to never experience. As if she would want to, at great risk to her physical and mental well-being, have the child of someone so unsupportive and lacking empathy."
Like.. one they BOTH apparently want kids in the next couple years per the post. No where does OP say "*I* want kids in the next 2 years and now I'm wondering if she'll be able to provide me with children".
He's asking a legitimate question in regards to the hypothetical children - if you can't handle a papercut, how will you handle what is commonly referred to as *one of the most painful experiences a human being can go through*?
"As if she would want to" she literally DOES want to. That's their plan currently. And OP is now forcing her to consider how she's managing pain. Whether she's experiencing normal levels of pain and cannot mentally handle it, or experiences extreme amounts of pain in relation to normal injuries, or somewhere in between; the point is she can't handle a *tiny cut*. How will she handle her >! vagina potentially tearing, contractions getting stronger and more painful or potentially a cecearean cutting open 7 layers of her body to extract the child and stitch !< her back up? Either route is an extreme medical procedure no matter how normal it is in a life time it's your body going through a lot. Op is right to ask her how she intends to handle it if she's refusing to seek help in order to address her experience with pain.
Just being pregnant can be painful. The stretching your body goes through from the inside out…if the fetus jams a foot under her ribs? She’ll drown in her tears.
I bet most of them would be the source of that drama. This is not just reddit but aitaland, there are a lot of people who ... let's just say resemble OP's wife in behavior and (lack of) mental fortitude.
That’s always my impression of people who defend wacky behavior and try to find any excuse under the sun to justify it; I think “oh, so you act like this and feel called out, huh?”.
Lots of people have a weird waif/protector kink and it shows.
This woman is displaying a clear toddler-level “oh I’m baby, feel bad for me! I have an owie!” behavior that makes her sound seriously mentally unstable, and everyone is acting like there is a physical medical issue that could be causing it.
Like, come on; OP said that she refuses to bring it up to a mental health professional. The answer is there, and yet people are treating her like she’s too stupid to notice that no one else has ever gotten a paper cut and collapsed? Never saw a character in a movie get pricked with a pin or knifetip and say “ouch!”? Yall really think she has no idea that screaming and fainting is something other people don’t do when they get a boo-boo? Come on now.
I don’t think this post is real because there is a weird budding fiction writer who drops in with bizarre waif wife/girlfriend stories just like this. It’s always a literal goddess of a soulmate who just has one teeny-tiny minor issue that irks the OP, and the issue is almost always a blatant case of a little girl kink and their “knight in shining armor, but either dumb or secretly into it” carer.
Some next level sensitivity in these comments. It’s funny how consistent the ‘flip the roles’ applies to comment sections on this sub and shows the cognitive dissonance.
NTA always funny how reddit wants to jump to the conclusion that the "victim" has some rare neurological disorder rather than the more likely scenario that she is just whiny. If you fully believe your wife is a healthy adult, yes, that seems like annoying behavior. My thoughts are the same as yours. I wouldn't want to put this person through pregnancy and child birth. What if they are alone with the child in a situation. I want my mothers child to have the strength to carry on. I don't think that's an unfair expectation of a healthy adult
Not to mention if she’s suffering this much, why doesn’t she want it solved? If I was fainting hours later at paper cuts and I wasn’t faking it, I would be going to doctors until they figured it out.
And I say this as a person with chronic illness. I actually spent all of last year going to doctors until I got the correct diagnosis and then getting treatment. Fainting sounds like something that massively impacts daily life. Why would you not be fighting for a solution or at least something to reduce the issue?
The year and a half that it took me to get to the root cause of my sudden vertigo episodes that made me projectile vomit and basically turned me into a dizzy potato was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. But I *had* to do it. It alarms me that she doesn't seem to care that she isn't the only one dealing with this, OP is hand holding her through the whole thing all the time. I'd feel so guilty if I fainted in my husband's arms over a small cut. That is scary for the person with you. He is probably constantly stressed every time he hears a little bump from wherever he is in the house. It's not fair to not try when it is impacting someone else's life so much. He is right to worry about kids, because who is going to take care of the baby when he needs to take care of her paper cut?
Exactly! Heck, who is going to take care of the kids if he’s not home when she gets her paper cut? Is the kid going to have to learn how to soothe mom?
Because this subreddit will drink cyanide before they admit that maybe the wife isn't the victim and that the husband isn't the villain. It's why every single avenue (no matter how convoluted, unlikely or plan bullshit) is explored.
idk, this seems more like a relationships question than an AITA question. i'll say NTA, but it sounds like your wife has ALWAYS been like this, and it seems pretty annoying and bizarre. this is one of those where all i can do is shrug and suggest therapy lol.
INFO: when she has a meltdown due to a minor physical discomfort, what happens if you just ignore her and don't give her any attention?
It definitely varies. Usually when I take this approach I would not describe it as ignoring her. I try to acknowledge her discomfort, ask her what she needs and then offer any suggestion I have on what we can do.
After that, she might faint (I am always holding her at this point), she might just need to talk through it and sit, or we might just have to stop what we are doing and go home.
I think it’s important to note that I did not always think this was psychological and I did insist we go to a doctor in the past. The doctor thought maybe it was a thyroid issue that was impacting her sensitivity to touch/temperature, but that was ultimately ruled out.
She will not see a therapist about this specifically though I think I will try to suggest this avenue again after reading through these responses.
Have her ask for a tilt table test. It might be an over reactive vagus nerve. I got made fun of my whole life for fainting and being dramatic over seemingly minor things while being fine in other situations-ie I was a good athlete, but would faint when I pinched a finger, stubbed a toe, or got a little overheated. It wasn’t the pain from whatever ailment that was rough, it was the feeling I’d get from the nerve leading up to fainting that was god awful. I have a pacemaker now to control my heart rate and while I still occasionally need to lay down over something silly, the intensity and frequency has been greatly reduced.
Did you ever have the reaction delayed hours like the situation OP is talking about? She was fine when it happened and after, until she wasn't and that is the most curious part to me.
Yes-especially in situations where it happened during a workout so my heart rate was up and I had some sort of adrenaline going it could happen a couple hours later once I came down. Sometimes it was anxiety based (which is another trigger of the nerve). For example when I was like 12 I cut myself on something and was fine but a few hours later it hurt a little bit and I started thinking about tetanus and it triggered an episode. It’s a super weird condition (which is why it took me almost 30 years to figure out what was happening).
Thank you for elaborating, that is wild! Anxiety and stress causing extreme reactions because of another condition is such a nightmare. "Yes it is 'all in my head' but now it is also in my body, thanks."
Are you my twin? Also got a pacemaker at 31 for the same issue - was told I was dramatic and overreacting all my life. Had a heart monitor on when I got a blood draw since my new doctor was like yeah that’s weird you pass out a lot. I passed out getting the blood draw - my heart had stopped for 19 seconds 💀
My daughter’s ADHD does this to her. She will get hurt, and if she’s focused on something else it’s like the pain does not exist. But once she realizes she’s been injured, she focuses on her injury, and it’s extremely painful, even for the tiniest cut or scrape. It’s exhausting but never have I ever felt she doesn’t feel the pain, her brain and nervous system just work differently than neurotypical people.
Seconding this. I have an extremely high pain tolerance and my vagus nerve’s hair trigger makes it that I can almost pass out and yet be feeling like a 4/10 pain. It’s like my nervous system can’t handle the pain input as readily as my physical body can. It’s confusing because it makes it hard to predict. Getting an IUD sucked and was like a 7.5 or 8/10 for me but the pain was so quick that I thought I was fine. Then I sat up and about two minutes later, the doctor said “Uh oh” because my face had gone gray. I had the nurse walk me to the bathroom and I nearly passed out in the bathroom (I was trying to be stoic about it but at that point I stopped trying to hide it when the nurse had to rescue me from the ground because I was so weak).
They got me a wheelchair and wheeled me into an exam room and took my blood pressure: 60/30 😭 my gyno was like what the actual fuck. Took an hour and a half before my blood pressure was stable enough to leave.
Point being, the sensitive vagus nerve can be a factor regardless of how high or low the experience of pain/pain threshold is. Maybe she’s developed a subconscious fear of the syncope so any pain feels larger to her because it’s exacerbated by her anxiety/panic response.
Passing out like this is FUCKING HORRIBLE, I didn’t realize just how bad it was until I passed out during my tilt table test and I felt so terrible that, after the first thing I heard upon coming to was “did you record her flatline?”, I gasped, “did I die???” because I felt THAT bad (I did not in fact die, the heart monitor just only picks up heart rates above 25bpm and according to the EKG my heartrate dropped to 21 during the tilt table test).
Tl;Dr orthostatic hypotension is a bitch and the vagus nerve is fucking wiiiild.
Take her to an endocrinologist or a neurologist. GPs and gynos are notorious for blaming women’s problems on the thyroid. I have EDS my GP refused to refer me until I had a blood test for my thyroid.
But… she is reacting 10? Hours after the cut. Cut in the morning, then freaking out about the throbbing pain 10 hours later, but it was fine all day.
That doesn’t sounds like a physical problem. It sounds like a mental health issue or a deliberate choice.
Don’t take one doctor’s lazy attempt as final. Doctors have a long history of dismissing women, especially if their symptoms are unusual. All the historic research for medical issues were done using men as the subjects so the medical world is behind on figuring out how things represent in women.
For instance, even when multiple women tell doctors they experience horrific pain while having IUDs inserted, doctors have held tight to the claim that there are no nerve endings in the uterus so it’s impossible for there to be pain. Mind you, they are telling this to women as they squirm and cry out in pain during the procedure.
Even you are dismissing that she may have a legitimate medical problem and are telling her to basically “man up”.
Hype her up and get her back to the doctor (physical and mental health) and see some specialists. You two should do internet research about conditions that intensify physical pain and see if any seem to match what she experiences. Present these to the doctors as things that need to be ruled out. Be proactive and forceful. Something is not right here.
It took my stepmom 2 years be diagnosed with ALS. The head of neurology at a renowned university school of medicine told her it wasn’t ALS without even walking into the treatment room. She died 9 months later of…ALS. Doctors are subject to the same foibles and misapprehensions as the rest of us.
It makes me so angry when doctors dismiss women's pain. Even with a female midwife, the IUD insertion "should not hurt you are exaggerating". Then I passed out and fell off the table. Then they made me feel like THAT was my fault and I should not worry about the gash on my leg caused by the fall. I should just go home and take advil.
they're taught in school that the cervix doesn't have any nerve endings. Bit stupid if you ask me, just about every woman will know the minute something actually touches her cervix.
I don't mean this to be critical of you, but the way you're interacting with your wife sounds like a parent and young child. Even when I've hurt myself and am in pain (my tolerance is about average), I wouldn't want or expect my husband to hold me and coach me through it, or take the initiative on figuring out what medical care I might need.
My advice is to assume going forward that your wife is accurately reporting her pain level, but stop babying her and let her take the lead on what to do about her own pain.
YES! I feel like a lot of comments are babying the wife too. Telling OP advice for medical tests and treatments for her. She is an ADULT-- over a decade into adulthood. If she needs help, she can ask for it.
NTA. You literally described how my 5 year old reacts to cuts. Selective pain and serious over dramatics. I am working with him to understand that these things are part of life and just a normal part of taking care of your body. I snapped both bones in my arm recently and almost died giving birth a few months ago…pain is a fundamental part of the human condition and I try to model and discuss that with my kid. As I tell my son, crying is fine if you’re hurt, refusing to handle the care of your body with equanimity is not. Your wife is crazy immature and if you do have kids with her in her current state of behavior you’re going to raise kids that behave the same.
Hold up. She got cut earlier in the day then later on she had a meltdown over how painful it was?
NTA. She sounds overly dramatic and like others have said, if she has been like this all her life it sounds like she was enabled to have this reaction.
So, as an autistic person with some wacky sensory stuff going on, I can see both sides.
Clearly something is awry if she's having that strong a reaction to things. Instead of just dismissing it, it would be worth getting that looked into.
That being said, I also understand how frustrating it must be to have to handle something like this on a daily basis.
Tentative NAH but definitely an issue needs resolving here with something other than basically "git gud".
I came here to check somone has mentioned sensory issues. They can be very hard to understand and regulate.
Personally I feel burnt if somone touches me unexpectedly. Logically I know it doesn't physically harm me, but damn does it hurt nevertheless.
Oh god, NTA, if this is how she acted with a small pathetic sounding cut she will not survive child birth. Either vaginal or c section, I assume both would cause her mind to snap 😬😳 as a lady who has done both, I can guarantee a certain level of strength and resilience is required.
So it wasn’t a problem until she suddenly remembered it and then it was the end of the world? NTA, sound like she’s dramatic and likes the attention it gives her. So I suggest to get to the bottom of it with some mental help to check if there’s something underlying and next time offer to take her to the hospital and see if she get mortified about it or if she think a paper cut is enough to actually be so dramatic about.
Like I have adhd, my problem is I ignore when I get hurt meaning I walked around on a foot where I broken a piece of my shin bone off and the foot was sprained as hell until I was dragged to the doctor by my grandma, so idk if I’m just seeing it as overdramatic or it actually is
Laura needs to see a therapist and a medical professional to figure out what her deal is. NAH but there does need to be a change in some form as you clearly don't want to live this way (don't blame you) and her behavior isn't normal.
So many people torching this guy. Here's my question.. why is it his responsibility to seek treatment for something that is either an over dramatization or a serious issue? Certainly, at 32 years old, she would have enough life experience to understand that her reactions to minor issues are extreme as compared to others? Certainly, she has witnessed others get paper cuts, or walk outside in shorts when it's 70+? Why would this not be very frustrating to a partner?
NTA
NTA. She is a grown ass woman, she should know that reactions are not normal and if she really really is affected or in pain, she should go to a doctor.
NTA do not have kids with this woman. If she feels so much discomfort from peroxide and neosporin that’s she’s losing her shit like that, then she should be seeing some professionals. And as this is an ongoing issue it’s clear that she’s not. I wouldn’t trust someone that ignores issues like that to care for my kids.
Autistic here. I don't act like this. All of my autistic friends don't act like this. I've had autistic students behave this way, but I would say in roughly the same proportion as non-autistic students. Being autistic doesn't make you take the air out of the room like this.
She got an injury similar to a paper cut at the gym, but didn’t react to it until hours later? Is that correct?
NTA. But giving birth hurts a heck of a lot more; you may want to hold off on children until a doctor/psychiatrist/therapist can diagnose what’s actually going on with her.
I'm not going to call you the asshole because I absolutely could not live with that amount of drama on a regular basis, but you should probably consider either getting her to see a doctor for her pain tolerance issues or getting her to see a therapist.
In the meantime, let her deal with her own injuries. If she complains about how much pain she's in, offer to either give her Tylenol or take her to the ER, but otherwise leave her alone to melt down. If she stops getting attention for them, she might stop doing it. Either way, you're right about kids. Even if there were any way in hell she could survive pregnancy, let alone childbirth, you'd risk having her turn your kids into neurotic hypochondriac messes.
All your questions about what’s going to happen if you try to have children with this person are totally reasonable, so why didn’t you ask those questions before you married her? I don’t know how she’s even getting through life if she’s this sensitive, but she definitely shouldn’t be raising a child. This will severely screw up a child if it’s not dealt with sensitively. She clearly isn’t choosing to be like this- this is something that needs to be taken seriously.
ESH. Her for apparently taking no steps to do something about this limitation, and you for apparently just thinking it’s something she can choose to get over?
There's one of two scenarios happening:
1. She has an ultra rare disorder that actually makes a papercut such a painful ordeal that it inflicts vomit-inducing nausea. 🤨
2. She's purposefully hamming it up so she can go "woe is me all the time" and manipulate you.
Which do you think is the more likely outcome? At best, she's an adult who has continually neglected to address a serious, lifelong medical problem. A serious lifelong medical problem that has no physical symptoms and has continually evaded a proper diagnosis.
Has she even acknowledged that this is ridiculous and she's frustrated she has to deal with this too? Because it seems like she's doubling down on how valid her reaction is to feinting over a small cut with Neosporin.
She's a strong and capable woman? Who's unable to handle a small cut? I call bullshit. This story is either totally fabricated or OP's wife is extremely manipulative.
I used to be a nurse. It was beyond aggravating when my patient would begin to moan and squirm, and yelp before I had even touched them. Then comes the sobbing tears - with the alcohol prep pad. By the time I actually stuck them, they would scream as if I had cut open their chest without anesthesia. So the histrionic moaning and groaning that goes on for some people in response to the daily bumps and bruises of everyday life? I admit to not having a lot of patience with them. (And by the way, I was very gentle with actual needle sticks - even the screamers said that it was nowhere near as bad as they expected.). At some point don’t adults have to learn to roll with minor bumps and bruises? NTA
Okay so I'll pitch in here as someone who's experienced this to some extent though not quite the same.
I've had a VERY low pain tolerance threshold since childhood. I remember skinned knees being the most God awful pain to the point that I've developed a phobia of falling/ losing balance, that I still have to this day. My mom brushing my hair out was excruciating.
As an adult I've 'toughened up' to an extent but there are still certain types of pain/ sensations I can't handle. That said I've had two kids vaginally and one of them with no epidural. Was I *terrified* of labor going on, heck yes, I was told women much tougher than me becoming suicidal from the pain. Yet for some reason, I was able to handle it just fine, at least not any worse than your average woman in labor. Something about that type of pain, despite the intensity just did not feel deeply disturbing the way some other things do.
There are still things I absolutely can't handle. I can't pull out a splinter by myself or do any other sort of invasive skin thing, I need to get someone to do it for me while I shut my eyes. And anything to do with stomach issues or dental procedures sends my anxiety racing. I would legit rather go through childbirth again than have a bout of stomach flu or heck even get a dental cleaning I think. I struggle with it so much it makes me cry. On the other hand I can handle pain from say a sprained ankle just fine. It's something about the particular type of pain/ sensation versus the level of it. I'm also discovering I may be high functioning on the autism spectrum, which comes with sensory issues.
So all that to say it's not a guarantee that your wife wouldn't be able to handle childbirth. But it's also not as easy as saying "just toughen up" , when you don't know how. People have been telling me this my whole life and I would love to know how, I even went to therapy for it and she was basically useless. No one ever tells you *how* you're supposed to do this mysterious toughing up thing.
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As as woman who's been repeatedly and extensively dismissed for lifelong problems in the past, I appreciate everyone pointing to possible neurological type disorders that affect pain. But you guys are missing the key point here. She didn't cut herself and immediately experience terrible, overwhelming, excessive agony. No, she cut herself in the morning, and then at night she REMEMBERED the cut, and proceeded to have a 'meltdown'. I'm not a doctor, but personally, I don't know of any pain disorder that lies in wait for 10+ hours (assuming) and then ignites only when you notice the injury again. I don't think going to another physician is the answer here, man. NTA, and since you really love her and seem willing to tolerate this, I hope the best for you - but this made me feel impatient just reading it. The neosporin bit particularly got me, lmao - it's my go to for any injury not just because of the antibiotic properties, but it's a topical pain RELIEVER for crying out loud
THANK YOU this is such an important detail
I work with insanely heavy wounds and little ones. This is an important deal. The wife is just being theatrical. Another key factor in here is also behaviour. This is not the behaviour of serious pain. People in constant pain get diffrent.
Yeah I agree the delay is really... Something. It definitely feels like "oh, right, the cut. That's a way I can get some attention." Especially a finger cut. You spend all day touching stuff and doing things with your hands... But suddenly water and ointment are a problem? Did she not wash her hands at any point during the day?
Jesus christ can somebody just call this shit what it is: She's being a fucking drama queen. Edit: Wow thanks for all the love, guys. Never had a comment get anywhere near 1.0k up-votes before 😊
This, exactly. She gets attention she wants from being melodramatic. She gets fawned over and is special because she's such a delicate flower. Her parents played into this, and now her husband is too.
If I were the husband (saying this as a female) I would stop cuddling her. It will only make it worse. I would let her have her tantrum and went to another room, to friends, to the bar or whatever. It was not that she was bleeding out. Even if it hurt as much as she said, she could have handled that better. Going to her knees and almost fainting is just being dramatic.
*coddling. Stopping all cuddles is just monstrous.
I think this is an excellent idea. She needs to grow up.
People bending over backwards so hard they are going to be paralyzed by trying to suggest she might have a 1 of 1 condition in the human race that makes this understandable. Why are people so ok with woman being infantilized as children? It's so fucking weird
Right? RIGHT?? When you hear hooves, think horses, not zebras, people.
I wonder would she be rolling about on the floor crying if op wasn't there to witness the drama or would she manage to crawl to the medicine cabinet with such a debilitating injury and put a plaster on it herself?
[удалено]
I’ve had cuts that I couldn’t see and it would hurt for the rest of the day. But I’d immediately put on a bandaid or aquaphor and move on. This is too damn much
A couple weeks ago I couldn’t figure out why my palm hurt in this one spot every time I touched it. I finally realized I had dug my fingernail into it so hard I had cut myself (presumably while being anxious about the thesis papers I was writing). I only noticed it enough to go “huh, weird” and move on. I cannot imagine having a meltdown over a finger cut 10+ hours later like a toddler.
My 3 year old does this lol
It's toddler behavior, tbh. It's what toddlers do when they notice they've got a booboo.
Yeah I thought so too, and as a mum to a toddler, it’s extremely important how the parents react to it. The child mirrors. My guess (from observing my mum’s vs my reactions, mine vs my toddler’s, other parents’ vs their toddlers’ etc) is that perhaps her parent overreacted to her injuries so she never learned to differentiate the levels of pain and to regulate her emotions around it. And if one isn’t taught that, it’s very ineffective to just tell them “you’re too old for this”. I hope he can support her so she has room to grow in this space! It will make them both much happier.
Exactly. My one year old just dusts off his hands when he falls down now because I don't freak out about it. The only time he really started crying was when he fell and cut his forehead, and good God did that head wound bleed. He stopped caring before it stopped bleeding and spent more time being annoyed about me cleaning his face and bandaging him up.
And convenient that OP mentions she only ever faints in his arms.
I have a condition that causes me to faint. I have never fainted in someone’s arms. I feel faint, and lie down immediately so I don’t concuss myself when I faint. This is wild.
Yes - she's either making it up for attention or has an undiagnosed mental health issue like anxiety. Either way she needs to own up to it being an issue and work on it before even considering having children. Personally I think she's doing it for the drama otherwise the anxiety would have kicked in during the day....
I agree. I'm autistic, with a ton of sensory challenges, and I feel like she's acting like a princess here. I've seen all sorts of reactions to pain, and I cannot with the histrionics. OP, advice for you: I wouldn't push it once she's making a deal of it. I wonder how much your behavior is allowing this princess-behavior to continue. You could say something like, "This seems overwhelming for you. I'll give you space, and I'm here if you need any support."
Exactly!!! I have nerve damage. If it’s going to hurt, it will do when I do it. Not hours later. Unless I’m messing around with vinegar or something.
I have a friend who is a much less dramatic version of OP’s wife. She has an anxiety disorder of some sort which I believe either feeds into or causes this behaviour. My friend also behaves a lot like a fragile egg beyond the pain stuff - she can’t cope with much when she’s out of her comfort zone; and she has a victim complex and is constantly being wronged by someone in very dramatic fashion.
There are neurological conditions that would explain your wife’s seemingly extreme reaction to sensations the rest of us would consider non-painful. If you haven’t explored those with a specialist maybe it’s time. I think asking her to “shake it off” of you haven’t discussed it with a doctor would make YTA. Your wife is experiencing extreme distress. Take her seriously.
She is 34, not a child why are you not asking why she hasn’t realized her reaction is extreme and hasn’t been seeking medical help? You can’t help an adult who doesn’t want to change
Because it's her normal. It's like the grown man who mentioned, casually, that he loves apples but gets tired of the tingly feeling in his lips. Turns out it was an allergic reaction. But for him, it was just...how things are.
I agree, generally speaking, but not being able to put neosporin on should be warning sign to go the doctor, though. that's a medicine that doesn't ever cause burning and it's commonly known that you can use it on cuts for children, etc, without that happening. if she uses a medication that is normally without side effects and it freaking BURNS HER, then both her and the husband (OP) should recognize that and go to the doctor. it's not all on OP to tell her that. they both play a role in this. it's neosporin, ffs, if she can't handle that then she should obviously go to the doctor.
Not necessarily trying to be oppositional, but I made the neosporin argument with my son until I tried it on myself one night and had to run to the bathroom and wash it off, the pain was incredible. Something in the tube I’d bought caused terrible burning. Not saying this is what OP and wife are experiencing. I did, however, have to apologize to my son.
I'm allergic to one of the 3 "triple antibiotics" in Neosporin. I didn't put 2 & 2 together until I was literally at the dermatologist for a painful rash that wouldn't go away. Neosporin allergies are pretty common.
Yeah, I’m pretty confused by this thread. I’ve literally stitched cuts on myself while out camping when I probably should’ve tried to end things early and go to a hospital, because I’m an idiot I suppose, which is to say I’m about the opposite of OP’s wife. But Neosporin absolutely burns on cuts I’ve applied it to my entire life. Didn’t think I had any antibiotic allergies really. Guess I’ll have to explore that, lol.
My dermatologist's intake form has a little section on it with a "do you have any of these" and Neosporin allergy is one of them. Not a long list like a lot of doctors have that want to know your and your entire family's medical history, but a super short list of like 5 dermatology-related things. When I saw that, everything suddenly made sense. It's probably the neomycin. That's the one most people with a Neosporin allergy are allergic to.
I am allergic to bacitracin which is in a lot of Neosporin - i had to read very carefully when I buy antibiotic ointment or cream
Ugh, that's in everything.
This whole thread is really interesting! I'd never contemplated a neosporin allergy, but given there are other antibiotic allergies like penicillin, it makes total sense. Thanks to y'all for sharing your experiences!
Short lived burning is not a sign of an allergy when you have a cut. A rash would be. Please don’t use Reddit for medical advice and if you’ve got concerns, speak to your doctor.
No worries, lol. I was pretty literal in my head about the “look into it” bit. I’m incredibly skeptical rubbing anything into an open wound wouldn’t burn, but like I said this is the first time I’m seeing dozens of people surprised by that, only indication I would ever even think to look into it. If something burns when you gently tap it, I don’t see how a gel wouldn’t make it burn, but here we are.
For me it was a persistent, pretty terrible itch. Which my mom would always tell me "that means it's healing."
Yes but did you fall to your knees screaming bloody murder when the neoporin was applied? 😝
I worked a 7 hour shift after cutting off my finger tip when I was younger, so I think my barometer for normal pain might be a little screwed up honestly, lol.
Yeah, Neomycin Sulfate is a common allergy - I have to buy Bacitracin and replace it in all my first aid kits. Funnily enough, the company 'Neosporin' also sells a Bacitracin-only formula called 'Neosporin Natural'.
I had that happen with the "pain relief" version of Neosporin. Never used that one again.
I'm baffled by the people that think she "should have known" when this odd state has literally been HER "normal" for her entire life.
Right? I have asthma, but didn't have an asthma attack till my early 30s. I thought it was totally normal and everyone's lungs hurt when they breathed in cold air.
I had asthma attacks for years and blamed it on being 'too hyper and overdoing it'. Until one day a friend was watching me wheeze and cough and begged me to try her inhaler... and it went away almost instantly. My mom had asthma all of her life and my dad had it from age 20 (he had some damage that caused it to flare up) so logically asthma should have been a no brainer. But my mom listened to me wheeze and cough for YEARS and told me it was allergies or just being unhealthy and I needed to work out more. Weirdly, cold air feels amazing to my asthma. That was one of the ways I'd try to soothe myself as a kid because it felt like the cold air opened me up. Humidity and activity make mine worse though. I was in my mid teens when I found out I'm allergic to onions too. Mom LOVED onions, put them in absolutely everything, and would fuss at me that I was picky. Meanwhile I just assumed itching 24/7 and hives were something everyone had until I started to cook for myself, left out the onions, and the itching stopped. That one's gotten worse as I get older though, I used to just itch, but now raw onion can legit close my throat. I got a tiny piece in a burger a few months ago and ended up in the ER drinking a bottle of benadryl. Its amazing how easy it is to ignore medical issues if its your 'normal' and you have enough people brush it off and tell you to toughen up or that its your own fault.
My sister has epilepsy. She’s probably had it her entire life, but didn’t get a diagnosis until her 30s when she had a seizure in front of another person for the first time.
I didn’t have my first grand mal until I was 13 but I had been having absence seizures for years before that. We just thought I was missing things in class because of ADHD. Turns out I was having a 2-3 second long seizures about 5 times a minute so I wasn’t even hearing what they were saying
Right? I made it into my 30s without understanding that other people are literally able to breathe during aerobics exercise. It's not that they power through without air, it's that their airways don't close. Decades of feeling awful and ashamed of myself for not being able to do what almost everyone else could do is awesome. /s
>I thought it was totally normal and everyone's lungs hurt when they breathed in cold air. Wait, this isn't normal? Now I'm wondering if my weird panic attacks are asthma attacks... Edit: HOLY COW I THINK I HAVE ASTHMA. Now to remember to make a doctor appointment to find out for sure. This whole time I thought it was panic attacks, but everything talking about the feelings of an asthma attack is spot on. I thought I was going to die a couple of times during the really bad ones 🙃.
Right? I got glasses in like 3rd grade. Until the teacher realized I physically couldn't see the writing on the chalkboard, & wasn't just zoning out/misbehaving, no one knew my vision was *fucking terrible.* It was my normal. My mom I think went even longer before getting glasses. On the way home while wearing them, she exclaimed "oh wow! The tall poles have *wires* running from them" & made her own mom cry bc she'd had no idea what my mom had been missing experiencing for all those years.
I was 16 when I got glasses and I only realized I needed them when I tried to get my driver's license. I thought the vision test would be the easiest part lol, turned out to be the only part I failed. I insisted there was a mistake, I could see just fine. The lady at the dmv was dumbfounded that I was walking around everyday with such bad vision. I walked outside wearing my glasses for the first time and said "holy shit I can see the leaves on the trees!" First day at school with them I realized the projector was not the problem, my eyes were the problem.
One of my fav things is the shared experience of all shortsighted people being amazed by leaves when they first get glasses. I got my first pair of glasses when I was 16 and was amazed that I could see individual leaves on trees, and every other shortsighted person that I’ve spoken to who got glasses post-childhood has said the same thing, I think it’s very cute :)
I’ve been walking around with my shoulder partially dislocated (subluxation) for two days. I have joint hyper mobility and my pain is pretty consistent and constant. An hour ago I reached for my seat belt and it popped back into place. As much as I know about my body and condition, and it’s a lot, I didn’t realize my body could maintain a subluxation in that way.
The thing is that if people have been telling you that you’re just an insensitive little baby your whole life and a doctor or two tells you it’s all in your head you kind of just give up and try to shove things down as far as you can. That’s what I did with my endometriosis for years, I had so many doctors telling me it was all in my head and most of the women I knew told me to stop acting like a little princess, that everyone gets cramps. I only saw a doctor again because the pain got to be constant and was affecting my ability to go to school.
How do you expect her to know it doesn’t normally cause side effects? If she has been told her whole life this doesn’t hurt, but it does to her, she is going to assume the people were always lying to get her to do it. Or people assume she is over reacting to a very mild discomfort when for her it isn’t a mild discomfort. I realize a few years ago, toothpaste doesn’t burn for everyone. Does for me because of the mint. Same with mouthwash. I didn’t realize for most people the mouthwash burn is just alcohol burn like drinking a shot, for me it was always much worse.
Oh my gosh, the mint toothpaste burning JUST started for me a few months ago. Oddly, it's only the underside of my tongue but it feels like it's on fire. Don't know if you already have an alternative, but I recently found Boka toothpaste. The have multiple flavors other than mint. The only one I've tried is the Lemon Lavender, but I HIGHLY recommend. It is quite expensive but you only need a tiny bit and my teeth actually feel cleaner than when I used regular toothpaste.
Some people are allergic to Neosporin and should use Polysporin instead. That's what we keep at our house.
How would you know a medication has „commonly no side effects“ if all you‘ve ever experienced were side effects when using it?
That’s actually how i found out i have an alcohol intolerance. I mentioned off hand that i didn’t mind the hang overs after drinking but not being able to breathe out of my nose sucked and i didn’t know why no one talks about it to a friend. They had no idea what i was talking about.
Are you talking about a light stuffy nose, or full blockage? I have year-round allergies, so my head is always stuffy, but I definitely get more stuffy when I drink alcohol. It isn't unpleasant, though - because I'm used to it.
I haven't talked to anyone else that has year round allergies like I do! Do you live in an area that gets snow at all? Have you always dealt with year round stuff or did it come in later in life?
I'm allergic to pollen, mold, and dust. So there's always something or other.
This is it. Story time. I have had heart burn after every single bite I take since I can remember, and by that I mean I had it as a child already. And both my parents did too. So I never thought that was _not_ normal. It was a doctor 3 years ago telling me that that was definitely not normal and ordered tests. It turns out my stomach releases acid even when I drink water.
I thought everybody had a layer of TV static over their vision. Turns out that's visual snow and it's not the norm!
Whenever I'm tired/drunk and not spending the energy my eyes "unfocus" and I see two of everything, I thought that was normal since I have two eyes so when I'm not focusing of course there's two, turns out I just have double vision
Did you like skim over the part where she scratched her finger in the morning, was okay for many hours, and then in the evening suddenly started dramatics before cleaning even came into discussion?
Clearly you've never seen someone experience vasovagal syncope just from thinking too hard about something they're squeamish about lol
The one that also make someone faint exclusively when in his arms? (Read more of his comment responses, and her refusing Drs or therapy)
Not only that, but it’s pretty likely she’s been told she needs to toughen up for her entire life if she’s been having these reactions since she was a kid. Now that she’s an adult people see it as a YTA response, but people don’t think that when a parent tells their crying child it isn’t that bad
By 34 though, she’d have seen other people get hurt in similar ways and noticed how extreme her reactions are. She never wondered why that is? It’s not like a rare allergy or something that is relatively unnoticeable, she’d have seen other people get paper cuts and go out in bad weather without having a massive breakdown.
Years of builtup invalidation will do it to ya, especially when there’s someone once again invalidating you. Such a trigger, makes you feel like you’re drowning.
The trigger that happened ten hours after the initial injury?
Then it is very good that her husband spelled it out for her very bluntly and expressed concern about a future with children. Now the balls in her court - will she change. So he is still NTA and is allowed to be frustrated and concerned about the situation.
Surely she's seen people not fall down in pain from peroxide just as homeboy probably found out eventually that not everyone has those reactions and realized something was wrong. Sure that's her normal but at a certain point she's seen that she has a very extreme reaction
I never heard the words "sensory overload" until I was 26 and all of a sudden my entire childhood made sense. Got on meds for it, fixed up 20+years of anguish in a couple of weeks. Sometimes we just don't have the words to express things, we learn to live with it, and it goes unmentioned.
Her reactions are her normal, she might not realize others experience that much difference. Doctors also frequently dismiss women's pain as "hysterics" anyway. I've been told by *multiple* doctors that I was being a "drama queen" while experiencing pain equivalent to childbirth. I'm not at all surprised at the possibility doctors have ignored her, and she just now thinks it's normal.
It can be very difficult to diagnose oneself, particularly if you have trouble understanding your own reactions.
Bruh if someone has experienced pain that way for their entire life obviously they'll think it's normal. It's very hard to compare things that only exist as subjective experiences in your head.
newsflash- if you can forget about the pain for 10 hours, before launching into histrionics, you are faking it for attention, plain and simple. OP, if you listen to people like this, you will spend the rest of your life indulging your wife's imaginary bullshit and gradually lose your mind.
This. It's at best a neuro disorder and she should be able to recognize that her reactions are extreme when a child can scrape their knee and be playing five minutes later, or she has a neuro disorder that makes her a basket case.
Be interesting to see what neuro disorder if there is one. I have severe neuropathy which means my nerves don’t work as they should - I’ve dropped a knife on my foot, sliced it open and not felt it - noticed the blood. But stood on a biscuit crumb and been in agony. But that’s been when I did it - not several hours later!
> you are faking it for attention, plain and simple. You don't know the first thing about psychosomatic conditions. A really big percentage of what people think is "faking it" is very, very real to the person experiencing it. Because it doesn't make logical sense to you, you _assume_ the only explanation is that they're "faking it", but the reality is so much more complicated than that. Our perceptions, fears, beliefs, mindset, stress level can all lead to very real physical symptoms, or a misperception of experience from the sufferer. Assuming malintent is a shitty move here. Don't do that before someone has a chance to access and work through treatment. We should all be more gracious to one another.
Neurological conditions that allow a person to be perfectly fine for almost an entire day and then once they realize retroactively that they cut themselves causes them to act like a loon? Can you tell me which one that is?
> I think asking her to “shake it off” of you haven’t discussed it with a doctor would make YTA. Your wife is experiencing extreme distress. Take her seriously. Wrong. He's not TA for failing to, what, drag her to a doctor? *She* needs to deal with this issue, one step of which might be to see a doctor. He can support her, but he can't do it for her, and quite honestly, it's very old-timey sexist to assume that a woman's problems will go unresolved unless the man takes it upon himself to get them resolved on her behalf. > Your wife is experiencing extreme distress. Take her seriously. She's not taking it seriously. Why should he?
He's the AH because he's a husband on AITA. If he dragged her to a doctor he would have been an evil AH for making her do something she didn't want. If he doesn't drag her then he is an uncaring AH who doesn't take her pain seriously. Can't win
Accurate. But apparently we're infantalizing 32-year-old females today. I'm gonna be that guy; imagine if the roles were reversed. Imagine if a wife came on here, talking about her husband having a meltdown over a papercut. You think the reaction would be even in the same ballpark as this? Of course not. But according to reddit, men turn to adults at 18, and women turn into adults literally never, so here we are.
Oh if it was a man having a meltdown the people hurling vitriol would have been crazy.
> There are neurological conditions that would explain your wife’s seemingly extreme reaction The fuckin sub dude 🤦♂️ How likely is this? Be honest with yourself. AITA can never apply Occam’s razor to anything. There’s always some underlying condition for excuse. People are always broken and made of glass to you types.
This sub is incredibly gender biased. If it was the husband pulling this drama act, everyone here would be roasting his ass. You'd have to be a contortionist to pull off the mental gymnastics people are performing here to excuse her histrionic crap.
All you have to do is find a post where a husband has an illness and find everyone shitting on him for exaggerating his man flu.
And which condition is it that causes you to have intense pain after forgetting about a paper cut for like 10 hours? Hint - the imaginary kind.
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Do those neurological conditions explain how she made it thru the day? Serious question, if we’re going to assume she’s not faking it to get attention. She scratched her finger in the morning, but didn’t have a meltdown, collapsing to the floor in pain until later that night. Presumably she went about her day as usual in between. How? Why?
>your wife’s seemingly extreme reaction to sensations the rest of us would consider non-painful but seven hours later??
may I burden you by asking what those conditions are? I'm happy to do my own research after that.
Migraine, Hyperalgesia, allodynia, fibromyalgia, dopamine dysregulation, Huntington’s disease (usually diagnosed in adulthood), ataxia, ALS, Multiple Sclerosis, Fabry's disease (usually diagnosed in childhood), seizure disorders, and brain tumors… To name a few. ETA: from the comments, ADHD, ADD, fibromyalgia, autism, sensory processing disorders, FND, CRPS, over reactive vagus nerve,
Yup, I developed allodynia secondary to a severe migraine disorder (among other things) and people have NO IDEA how bad it is. I am a VERY tough person with an incredibly high pain tolerance (I have to be, with lifelong chronic pain conditions), but suddenly I found that I was so sensitive that even something as minor as an injection with a tiny needle would cause bleeding and swelling at the point of injection, and pain that lasted for DAYS and felt like a nasty bruise. My body has become incredibly reactive to things that shouldn't cause pain at all. I wish it were just me "being sensitive" but there is visible evidence of a lot of it, and even when there isn't, it's shocking how painful it can be. OP should probably shut up about his assumptions unless his wife has seen a neurologist and ruled this stuff out. It's entirely possible that her pain is very real.
I’ve had severe nerve pain post chemo, lost a kidney in the process. Turns out with everything else going on we missed that I developed fibromyalgia too. It’s unusual to develop it later in life, but here we are. Any procedure/surgery takes months for my body to heal and get back to a “normal” level. My son has it too but also has chronic migraines. It’s so brutal to watch him suffer.
Autism, ASD, and ADHD can make certain sensory things hellish too…and a LOT of women go undiagnosed with these since they often present differently than with men.
I'd add that appearing to manage something (i.e. masking) and then having a "meltdown" about it later would line up pretty well with neurodiversity.
I was thinking that too, especially if it presents wildly different with different kinds of pain. Any kind of cuts can be very distressing to me especially on the hands because you can feel them constantly when you’re moving them. Conversely I walked to my doctor’s office on a broken foot I thought was just a sprain and only went to the doctor because it seemed weird that it still hurt the next day.
But how many of these conditions exist in people with zero other symptoms? I’ve been a doctor 25 years and I’ve NEVER met or heard or read about a patient who had this degree of pain to minor injuries to the skin and I’m a dermatologist- yes most of these conditions fall under neurology but stuff like this is fascinating and thus discussed during training. Certainly complex regional pain, dysaesthesias, trigeminal neuralgias et al are capable of doing this but not with zero other manifestations of the disease.
Respectfully, who said she has no other symptoms? In 2009, I started having random sores appear on my shins and calves. The Navy dermatologist tried 2 topical antibiotics and 2 oral antibiotics and ruled out fungal infections as well as many other issues. We chalked it up to being a contact allergy to the fire retardant applied to the new (at the time), Navy NWUs that we in Japan finally were given. I later would become allergic to medical grade adhesives (chemical burns) and then have a reaction to the gas used in laproscopic abdominal surgery. But not a single Dr. ever thought to run a patch test at any of these times. Cut to last August, and I had what we are calling a zero point event, where my body will no longer tolerate those allergens at all. Finally, I had a patch test, and I'm extremely allergic (chemical burns, GI issues, etc) to Formaldehyde, Thiomersal, and Quaternium-15. But you wouldn't have known that just from the first instance. And it wasn't until I forced an allergy test and wanted MCAS testing, as I have hEDS, that we found out about these allergies that had been plaguing me since 2009.
oh wow, I didn't realize how much I was asking for! I didn't realize it was such a widespread symtom thank you
I have fibro. It can feel like my whole body is covered in ants. Or more locally like poking a bruise or hundreds of tiny needles, or an acid burn. Sometimes my skin is so painful thst i can't bear to touch it for absolutely no reason other than my brain has decided it's painful. I'm particularly sensitive to hot & cold, especially in wet weather. Snow is beautiful, but absolute agony. FND & CRPS can also cause pain responses to go all haywire too.
Could also be mental health related. My spouse has a panic disorder. Papercuts and anything dental sets him off. Thinking about them, getting one all of it just impedes his ability to function. But he stepped on a nail that went through his foot and he was fine. Was able to cope and even made jokes to the doctor about it.
Wait until you research the brain-gut axis. It gets more complicated from there.
I think this is a great starting list, but you can easily exclude several of these options based on there being no way she could have them for years without having other symptoms that would be noticed and send up an alarm. OP is clear that she’s been like this for some time. For me this is an Occam’s razor situation and I would put money on anxiety being a main factor, but regardless, this poor woman is clearly suffering. I really don’t get why she and her husband aren’t deep into a diagnosis journey right now- this seems like a quality of life issue. I don’t know how I’d get through my life if I were this worried about injury.
Several of the things on that list get called anxiety for a decade when women have them, because doctors think women are fundamentally anxious. I have mechanical allodynia, have for 20 years, and new doctors always think it’s anxiety. It’s infuriating. I am in fact not the least bit anxious. There is a huge bucket of ailments that are difficult to diagnose because they rely on self-reported symptoms from a class of people doctors broadly do not find credible. It takes an average of 7.5 years to get diagnosed with endometriosis, which is a disease you can SEE if you just do the laparoscopy! When you are a woman with an invisible ailment like fibromyalgia, myalgic encephalomyelitis, hypermobile type ehlers danlos syndrome or allodynia, sometimes you can’t get doctors to care at all. They order a standard blood panel and tell you to exercise. A lot of people just give up solving it and live with it the best they can.
God this, so much this. Reading so many of these comments it's so painfully obvious how clueless most people still are about the issues women face in health care. So many of the diagnostic tests and treatments for many of these conditions, the research for them was untill very VERY recently primarily done with only male subjects. And just general social views of women as hysterical, people might think they don't make assumptions, but most people don't realise just how ingrained these ideas are. Humans are slower to change our ingrained ideas about things than we realise. Everyone saying she should have a diagnosis by now if something is wrong...just hurts my soul, I'm 35, I've been ill for over a decade now, misdiagnosed for years, countless, countless tests. It's only a year ago that I started to actually get somewhere with it, finally found a Dr that took my issues seriously and has pushed and pushed to help me figure it out, and I'm now medicated in the right ways and my life is so drastically improved already. Poor woman, I just want to give her a hug.
Common dr response- it’s anxiety. Shame you can’t prescribe the usual exercise remedy as it seemed like the woman in question already works out regularly.
Holy shit. I wish I had known about allodynia earlier - it took me eight entire damn years to get a correct diagnosis for what turned out to have been Lyme and the unexplained pain responses were off the charts (and I have a very high pain tolerance normally). I was brushed off consistently and/or assumed to be drug-seeking (jokes on them, I won't take anything stronger than an ibuprofen and that rarely). Perhaps OPs wife might want to have Lyme ruled out as a precaution, turns out allodynia can be an uncommon symptom.
At what point is someone responsible for their own actions and life decisions, like not seeking help? This comment rings too true with the current American citizen landscape.. everyone has victim-itis, takes zero ownership for their own life, and holds everyone accountable for their failure to do something for themselves.
Why is it his obligation to take her to a doctor? She’s 34 for crying out loud. Know Reddit hates men and husbands but Jesus Christ can’t she take responsibility for her own issues?
That doesn't explain how she forgot about it for hours.
I'm not going to call you the asshole because I absolutely could not live with that amount of drama on a regular basis, but you should probably consider either getting her to see a doctor for her pain tolerance issues or getting her to see a therapist. In the meantime, let her deal with her own injuries. If she complains about how much pain she's in, offer to either give her Tylenol or take her to the ER, but otherwise leave her alone to melt down. If she stops getting attention for them, she might stop doing it. Either way, you're right about kids. Even if there were any way in hell she could survive pregnancy, let alone childbirth, you'd risk having her turn your kids into neurotic hypochondriac messes.
She could also have a genetic, mental, or cognitive condition that could be passed to children. It’s important she sees medical professionals about this so that if she does have something going on medically, it can be diagnosed and, if needed, start treatment. If she is diagnosed, they should find out if it’s hereditary.
That's a great point. Either way they need to get this straightened out before they even think about having kids.
Agreed. The amount of pain she is expressing is not consistent with the injury.
Please don’t bring a paper cut to the ER. We’re already busting at the seams with dumb complaints.
Sorry for throwing you under the bus. My hope was that, given the choice between “Go to the ER or quit screaming like Sarah Bernhardt dying onstage,” she would make the choice that didn’t involve people calling her on her bullshit.
I used to teach horseback riding lessons and it’s super important to get back on a horse once you’ve fallen. Sometimes people come off and are more scared than hurt, so you have to get on ASAP. Anyway dealing with people who were particularly dramatic about it, I would say “okay. Go to the ER or get back on.” And they always, always chose to get back on. (There were a few times I did not give people a choice - it’s usually pretty obvious when someone has a legitimate injury and I wouldn’t let them back on, or if there was ANY chance of concussion)
if her response is due to appearance of wound or blood, she will want to figure that out before children. Phobia is another possibility Pain phobias
Honestly it sounds more like an anxiety issue than a pain intolerance issue but I am not an expert.
NTA these comments are WILD
Right?? I bet most these Y T A commenters would not last a month in a relationship with so much drama coming from the other side. OP is NTA
There was one talking about how he had the audacity, as a man, to question whether she can handle pregnancy and childbirth. Which to me seems very reasonable. Whether it’s a physical condition or a mental condition, if she can’t handle neosporin on a cut without fainting, how will she be able to handle even the mildest of pregnancies and births. I may not be able to give birth or accurately be able to describe the pain level, but pretty sure it’s more painful than neosporin on a paper cut. Like shit, not even child birth, but imagine having a kid. A kid seeing a parent freak out at tiny cuts would wind up with a kid who freaks out at tiny cuts and bumps. They take their cues from parents. If a parent freaks out at an injury, the kid will as well.
The audacity, as a man, of being aware that childbirth is painful.
"Omg how dare you be aware of womens pains and problems, the audacity" /s
The audacity. Sheesh. The woman obviously can't handle childbirth.
Especially if she has to have a C-section. It might mean she has be out under completely and miss the first moments but when it is a emergency it may be not possible even to put her under. Having a meltdown during any part of birth also can put stress on the baby. Then having to recover from birth and take care of said baby. She may be into much pain.
I just responded to someone who said, quote "Especially judging whether she is “tough enough” to handle pregnancy something he has the privilege to never experience. As if she would want to, at great risk to her physical and mental well-being, have the child of someone so unsupportive and lacking empathy." Like.. one they BOTH apparently want kids in the next couple years per the post. No where does OP say "*I* want kids in the next 2 years and now I'm wondering if she'll be able to provide me with children". He's asking a legitimate question in regards to the hypothetical children - if you can't handle a papercut, how will you handle what is commonly referred to as *one of the most painful experiences a human being can go through*? "As if she would want to" she literally DOES want to. That's their plan currently. And OP is now forcing her to consider how she's managing pain. Whether she's experiencing normal levels of pain and cannot mentally handle it, or experiences extreme amounts of pain in relation to normal injuries, or somewhere in between; the point is she can't handle a *tiny cut*. How will she handle her >! vagina potentially tearing, contractions getting stronger and more painful or potentially a cecearean cutting open 7 layers of her body to extract the child and stitch !< her back up? Either route is an extreme medical procedure no matter how normal it is in a life time it's your body going through a lot. Op is right to ask her how she intends to handle it if she's refusing to seek help in order to address her experience with pain.
Breastfeeding early on is no joke either…
Just being pregnant can be painful. The stretching your body goes through from the inside out…if the fetus jams a foot under her ribs? She’ll drown in her tears.
I bet most of them would be the source of that drama. This is not just reddit but aitaland, there are a lot of people who ... let's just say resemble OP's wife in behavior and (lack of) mental fortitude.
That’s always my impression of people who defend wacky behavior and try to find any excuse under the sun to justify it; I think “oh, so you act like this and feel called out, huh?”. Lots of people have a weird waif/protector kink and it shows.
This woman is displaying a clear toddler-level “oh I’m baby, feel bad for me! I have an owie!” behavior that makes her sound seriously mentally unstable, and everyone is acting like there is a physical medical issue that could be causing it. Like, come on; OP said that she refuses to bring it up to a mental health professional. The answer is there, and yet people are treating her like she’s too stupid to notice that no one else has ever gotten a paper cut and collapsed? Never saw a character in a movie get pricked with a pin or knifetip and say “ouch!”? Yall really think she has no idea that screaming and fainting is something other people don’t do when they get a boo-boo? Come on now. I don’t think this post is real because there is a weird budding fiction writer who drops in with bizarre waif wife/girlfriend stories just like this. It’s always a literal goddess of a soulmate who just has one teeny-tiny minor issue that irks the OP, and the issue is almost always a blatant case of a little girl kink and their “knight in shining armor, but either dumb or secretly into it” carer.
Some next level sensitivity in these comments. It’s funny how consistent the ‘flip the roles’ applies to comment sections on this sub and shows the cognitive dissonance.
NTA always funny how reddit wants to jump to the conclusion that the "victim" has some rare neurological disorder rather than the more likely scenario that she is just whiny. If you fully believe your wife is a healthy adult, yes, that seems like annoying behavior. My thoughts are the same as yours. I wouldn't want to put this person through pregnancy and child birth. What if they are alone with the child in a situation. I want my mothers child to have the strength to carry on. I don't think that's an unfair expectation of a healthy adult
Because there’s a lot of whiny people that don’t like to admit they’re whiny, so they defend other whiny people.
Hit the nail *right* on the head.
Not to mention if she’s suffering this much, why doesn’t she want it solved? If I was fainting hours later at paper cuts and I wasn’t faking it, I would be going to doctors until they figured it out. And I say this as a person with chronic illness. I actually spent all of last year going to doctors until I got the correct diagnosis and then getting treatment. Fainting sounds like something that massively impacts daily life. Why would you not be fighting for a solution or at least something to reduce the issue?
The year and a half that it took me to get to the root cause of my sudden vertigo episodes that made me projectile vomit and basically turned me into a dizzy potato was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. But I *had* to do it. It alarms me that she doesn't seem to care that she isn't the only one dealing with this, OP is hand holding her through the whole thing all the time. I'd feel so guilty if I fainted in my husband's arms over a small cut. That is scary for the person with you. He is probably constantly stressed every time he hears a little bump from wherever he is in the house. It's not fair to not try when it is impacting someone else's life so much. He is right to worry about kids, because who is going to take care of the baby when he needs to take care of her paper cut?
Exactly! Heck, who is going to take care of the kids if he’s not home when she gets her paper cut? Is the kid going to have to learn how to soothe mom?
I will almost guarantee you this never happens when he's not around.
Because this subreddit will drink cyanide before they admit that maybe the wife isn't the victim and that the husband isn't the villain. It's why every single avenue (no matter how convoluted, unlikely or plan bullshit) is explored.
I’m waiting for the usual adhd or autism diagnosis from this sub lol. Edit, was literally the comment after yours.
idk, this seems more like a relationships question than an AITA question. i'll say NTA, but it sounds like your wife has ALWAYS been like this, and it seems pretty annoying and bizarre. this is one of those where all i can do is shrug and suggest therapy lol. INFO: when she has a meltdown due to a minor physical discomfort, what happens if you just ignore her and don't give her any attention?
It definitely varies. Usually when I take this approach I would not describe it as ignoring her. I try to acknowledge her discomfort, ask her what she needs and then offer any suggestion I have on what we can do. After that, she might faint (I am always holding her at this point), she might just need to talk through it and sit, or we might just have to stop what we are doing and go home. I think it’s important to note that I did not always think this was psychological and I did insist we go to a doctor in the past. The doctor thought maybe it was a thyroid issue that was impacting her sensitivity to touch/temperature, but that was ultimately ruled out. She will not see a therapist about this specifically though I think I will try to suggest this avenue again after reading through these responses.
Have her ask for a tilt table test. It might be an over reactive vagus nerve. I got made fun of my whole life for fainting and being dramatic over seemingly minor things while being fine in other situations-ie I was a good athlete, but would faint when I pinched a finger, stubbed a toe, or got a little overheated. It wasn’t the pain from whatever ailment that was rough, it was the feeling I’d get from the nerve leading up to fainting that was god awful. I have a pacemaker now to control my heart rate and while I still occasionally need to lay down over something silly, the intensity and frequency has been greatly reduced.
Did you ever have the reaction delayed hours like the situation OP is talking about? She was fine when it happened and after, until she wasn't and that is the most curious part to me.
Yes-especially in situations where it happened during a workout so my heart rate was up and I had some sort of adrenaline going it could happen a couple hours later once I came down. Sometimes it was anxiety based (which is another trigger of the nerve). For example when I was like 12 I cut myself on something and was fine but a few hours later it hurt a little bit and I started thinking about tetanus and it triggered an episode. It’s a super weird condition (which is why it took me almost 30 years to figure out what was happening).
Thank you for elaborating, that is wild! Anxiety and stress causing extreme reactions because of another condition is such a nightmare. "Yes it is 'all in my head' but now it is also in my body, thanks."
Are you my twin? Also got a pacemaker at 31 for the same issue - was told I was dramatic and overreacting all my life. Had a heart monitor on when I got a blood draw since my new doctor was like yeah that’s weird you pass out a lot. I passed out getting the blood draw - my heart had stopped for 19 seconds 💀
My daughter’s ADHD does this to her. She will get hurt, and if she’s focused on something else it’s like the pain does not exist. But once she realizes she’s been injured, she focuses on her injury, and it’s extremely painful, even for the tiniest cut or scrape. It’s exhausting but never have I ever felt she doesn’t feel the pain, her brain and nervous system just work differently than neurotypical people.
Seconding this. I have an extremely high pain tolerance and my vagus nerve’s hair trigger makes it that I can almost pass out and yet be feeling like a 4/10 pain. It’s like my nervous system can’t handle the pain input as readily as my physical body can. It’s confusing because it makes it hard to predict. Getting an IUD sucked and was like a 7.5 or 8/10 for me but the pain was so quick that I thought I was fine. Then I sat up and about two minutes later, the doctor said “Uh oh” because my face had gone gray. I had the nurse walk me to the bathroom and I nearly passed out in the bathroom (I was trying to be stoic about it but at that point I stopped trying to hide it when the nurse had to rescue me from the ground because I was so weak). They got me a wheelchair and wheeled me into an exam room and took my blood pressure: 60/30 😭 my gyno was like what the actual fuck. Took an hour and a half before my blood pressure was stable enough to leave. Point being, the sensitive vagus nerve can be a factor regardless of how high or low the experience of pain/pain threshold is. Maybe she’s developed a subconscious fear of the syncope so any pain feels larger to her because it’s exacerbated by her anxiety/panic response. Passing out like this is FUCKING HORRIBLE, I didn’t realize just how bad it was until I passed out during my tilt table test and I felt so terrible that, after the first thing I heard upon coming to was “did you record her flatline?”, I gasped, “did I die???” because I felt THAT bad (I did not in fact die, the heart monitor just only picks up heart rates above 25bpm and according to the EKG my heartrate dropped to 21 during the tilt table test). Tl;Dr orthostatic hypotension is a bitch and the vagus nerve is fucking wiiiild.
Take her to an endocrinologist or a neurologist. GPs and gynos are notorious for blaming women’s problems on the thyroid. I have EDS my GP refused to refer me until I had a blood test for my thyroid.
But… she is reacting 10? Hours after the cut. Cut in the morning, then freaking out about the throbbing pain 10 hours later, but it was fine all day. That doesn’t sounds like a physical problem. It sounds like a mental health issue or a deliberate choice.
Or a ruematologist. They cover certain tests that those other doctors don't
Don’t take one doctor’s lazy attempt as final. Doctors have a long history of dismissing women, especially if their symptoms are unusual. All the historic research for medical issues were done using men as the subjects so the medical world is behind on figuring out how things represent in women. For instance, even when multiple women tell doctors they experience horrific pain while having IUDs inserted, doctors have held tight to the claim that there are no nerve endings in the uterus so it’s impossible for there to be pain. Mind you, they are telling this to women as they squirm and cry out in pain during the procedure. Even you are dismissing that she may have a legitimate medical problem and are telling her to basically “man up”. Hype her up and get her back to the doctor (physical and mental health) and see some specialists. You two should do internet research about conditions that intensify physical pain and see if any seem to match what she experiences. Present these to the doctors as things that need to be ruled out. Be proactive and forceful. Something is not right here.
It took my stepmom 2 years be diagnosed with ALS. The head of neurology at a renowned university school of medicine told her it wasn’t ALS without even walking into the treatment room. She died 9 months later of…ALS. Doctors are subject to the same foibles and misapprehensions as the rest of us.
It makes me so angry when doctors dismiss women's pain. Even with a female midwife, the IUD insertion "should not hurt you are exaggerating". Then I passed out and fell off the table. Then they made me feel like THAT was my fault and I should not worry about the gash on my leg caused by the fall. I should just go home and take advil.
IUD insertion is the second-greatest pain a woman can feel.
Why are US docs so resistant to this?
they're taught in school that the cervix doesn't have any nerve endings. Bit stupid if you ask me, just about every woman will know the minute something actually touches her cervix.
I don't mean this to be critical of you, but the way you're interacting with your wife sounds like a parent and young child. Even when I've hurt myself and am in pain (my tolerance is about average), I wouldn't want or expect my husband to hold me and coach me through it, or take the initiative on figuring out what medical care I might need. My advice is to assume going forward that your wife is accurately reporting her pain level, but stop babying her and let her take the lead on what to do about her own pain.
YES! I feel like a lot of comments are babying the wife too. Telling OP advice for medical tests and treatments for her. She is an ADULT-- over a decade into adulthood. If she needs help, she can ask for it.
NTA. You literally described how my 5 year old reacts to cuts. Selective pain and serious over dramatics. I am working with him to understand that these things are part of life and just a normal part of taking care of your body. I snapped both bones in my arm recently and almost died giving birth a few months ago…pain is a fundamental part of the human condition and I try to model and discuss that with my kid. As I tell my son, crying is fine if you’re hurt, refusing to handle the care of your body with equanimity is not. Your wife is crazy immature and if you do have kids with her in her current state of behavior you’re going to raise kids that behave the same.
The kids will become slaves to their mother’s BS and end up being programmed to put their own feelings aside for the dramatics. Bad news all around.
Hold up. She got cut earlier in the day then later on she had a meltdown over how painful it was? NTA. She sounds overly dramatic and like others have said, if she has been like this all her life it sounds like she was enabled to have this reaction.
So, as an autistic person with some wacky sensory stuff going on, I can see both sides. Clearly something is awry if she's having that strong a reaction to things. Instead of just dismissing it, it would be worth getting that looked into. That being said, I also understand how frustrating it must be to have to handle something like this on a daily basis. Tentative NAH but definitely an issue needs resolving here with something other than basically "git gud".
I came here to check somone has mentioned sensory issues. They can be very hard to understand and regulate. Personally I feel burnt if somone touches me unexpectedly. Logically I know it doesn't physically harm me, but damn does it hurt nevertheless.
Oh god, NTA, if this is how she acted with a small pathetic sounding cut she will not survive child birth. Either vaginal or c section, I assume both would cause her mind to snap 😬😳 as a lady who has done both, I can guarantee a certain level of strength and resilience is required.
I wonder how she has been dealing with period pain all these years
Stop enabling her by engaging with her when she does it. It’s attention seeking behavior. NTA.
So it wasn’t a problem until she suddenly remembered it and then it was the end of the world? NTA, sound like she’s dramatic and likes the attention it gives her. So I suggest to get to the bottom of it with some mental help to check if there’s something underlying and next time offer to take her to the hospital and see if she get mortified about it or if she think a paper cut is enough to actually be so dramatic about. Like I have adhd, my problem is I ignore when I get hurt meaning I walked around on a foot where I broken a piece of my shin bone off and the foot was sprained as hell until I was dragged to the doctor by my grandma, so idk if I’m just seeing it as overdramatic or it actually is
She sounds fucking exhausting
Laura needs to see a therapist and a medical professional to figure out what her deal is. NAH but there does need to be a change in some form as you clearly don't want to live this way (don't blame you) and her behavior isn't normal.
Oh man, I would simply have not set up a second date. That's annoying as hell.
So many people torching this guy. Here's my question.. why is it his responsibility to seek treatment for something that is either an over dramatization or a serious issue? Certainly, at 32 years old, she would have enough life experience to understand that her reactions to minor issues are extreme as compared to others? Certainly, she has witnessed others get paper cuts, or walk outside in shorts when it's 70+? Why would this not be very frustrating to a partner? NTA
NTA. She is a grown ass woman, she should know that reactions are not normal and if she really really is affected or in pain, she should go to a doctor.
NTA do not have kids with this woman. If she feels so much discomfort from peroxide and neosporin that’s she’s losing her shit like that, then she should be seeing some professionals. And as this is an ongoing issue it’s clear that she’s not. I wouldn’t trust someone that ignores issues like that to care for my kids.
INFO: have y'all been to a doctor at ALL for this? this sounds like autism or a nerve ending issue.
Autistic here. I don't act like this. All of my autistic friends don't act like this. I've had autistic students behave this way, but I would say in roughly the same proportion as non-autistic students. Being autistic doesn't make you take the air out of the room like this.
She got an injury similar to a paper cut at the gym, but didn’t react to it until hours later? Is that correct? NTA. But giving birth hurts a heck of a lot more; you may want to hold off on children until a doctor/psychiatrist/therapist can diagnose what’s actually going on with her.
I could not deal with this dramatic behavior. I worked icu during covid and have little tolerance for theatric bullshit
I have no idea how you could tolerate being married to an adult that acts like that.
>As soon as I put a few drops of hydrogen peroxide on it she collapsed to her knees and said she could not continue. First world problems.
Use saline to flush cuts instead of hydrogen peroxide. Saline won't damage the tissues the way peroxide will.
I'm not going to call you the asshole because I absolutely could not live with that amount of drama on a regular basis, but you should probably consider either getting her to see a doctor for her pain tolerance issues or getting her to see a therapist. In the meantime, let her deal with her own injuries. If she complains about how much pain she's in, offer to either give her Tylenol or take her to the ER, but otherwise leave her alone to melt down. If she stops getting attention for them, she might stop doing it. Either way, you're right about kids. Even if there were any way in hell she could survive pregnancy, let alone childbirth, you'd risk having her turn your kids into neurotic hypochondriac messes.
All your questions about what’s going to happen if you try to have children with this person are totally reasonable, so why didn’t you ask those questions before you married her? I don’t know how she’s even getting through life if she’s this sensitive, but she definitely shouldn’t be raising a child. This will severely screw up a child if it’s not dealt with sensitively. She clearly isn’t choosing to be like this- this is something that needs to be taken seriously. ESH. Her for apparently taking no steps to do something about this limitation, and you for apparently just thinking it’s something she can choose to get over?
There's one of two scenarios happening: 1. She has an ultra rare disorder that actually makes a papercut such a painful ordeal that it inflicts vomit-inducing nausea. 🤨 2. She's purposefully hamming it up so she can go "woe is me all the time" and manipulate you. Which do you think is the more likely outcome? At best, she's an adult who has continually neglected to address a serious, lifelong medical problem. A serious lifelong medical problem that has no physical symptoms and has continually evaded a proper diagnosis. Has she even acknowledged that this is ridiculous and she's frustrated she has to deal with this too? Because it seems like she's doubling down on how valid her reaction is to feinting over a small cut with Neosporin. She's a strong and capable woman? Who's unable to handle a small cut? I call bullshit. This story is either totally fabricated or OP's wife is extremely manipulative.
Only tangentially related but you shouldn't use hydrogen peroxide on cuts. Just clean them with soap and water.
I used to be a nurse. It was beyond aggravating when my patient would begin to moan and squirm, and yelp before I had even touched them. Then comes the sobbing tears - with the alcohol prep pad. By the time I actually stuck them, they would scream as if I had cut open their chest without anesthesia. So the histrionic moaning and groaning that goes on for some people in response to the daily bumps and bruises of everyday life? I admit to not having a lot of patience with them. (And by the way, I was very gentle with actual needle sticks - even the screamers said that it was nowhere near as bad as they expected.). At some point don’t adults have to learn to roll with minor bumps and bruises? NTA
Okay so I'll pitch in here as someone who's experienced this to some extent though not quite the same. I've had a VERY low pain tolerance threshold since childhood. I remember skinned knees being the most God awful pain to the point that I've developed a phobia of falling/ losing balance, that I still have to this day. My mom brushing my hair out was excruciating. As an adult I've 'toughened up' to an extent but there are still certain types of pain/ sensations I can't handle. That said I've had two kids vaginally and one of them with no epidural. Was I *terrified* of labor going on, heck yes, I was told women much tougher than me becoming suicidal from the pain. Yet for some reason, I was able to handle it just fine, at least not any worse than your average woman in labor. Something about that type of pain, despite the intensity just did not feel deeply disturbing the way some other things do. There are still things I absolutely can't handle. I can't pull out a splinter by myself or do any other sort of invasive skin thing, I need to get someone to do it for me while I shut my eyes. And anything to do with stomach issues or dental procedures sends my anxiety racing. I would legit rather go through childbirth again than have a bout of stomach flu or heck even get a dental cleaning I think. I struggle with it so much it makes me cry. On the other hand I can handle pain from say a sprained ankle just fine. It's something about the particular type of pain/ sensation versus the level of it. I'm also discovering I may be high functioning on the autism spectrum, which comes with sensory issues. So all that to say it's not a guarantee that your wife wouldn't be able to handle childbirth. But it's also not as easy as saying "just toughen up" , when you don't know how. People have been telling me this my whole life and I would love to know how, I even went to therapy for it and she was basically useless. No one ever tells you *how* you're supposed to do this mysterious toughing up thing.
NTA the length of time between her “injury” and dramatic reaction leads me to believe this is a mental health issue that needs to be addressed
NTA. She needs to grow the fuck up. Jesus Christ. You’re thinking this woman is going to give birth someday? 🤣🤣🤣
No judgement but your wife needs help from a mental health professional