My Wife was the entitled Parent, and caused our divorce.

9,931 points381 commentssubmitted by FicklestPickle to r/entitledparents2

Hi everyone, so I am a first time Reddit user, I decided to make a reddit post of my own personal experience with an entitled parent after finding a few entitles parent YouTube videos. The EP in this story was actually my (then) wife, and it is was a factor in what caused us to divorce.

So as a starter, my wife who I will call Emily was always a bit entitled, as she had grown up with wealthy parent’s and truly was one of those “Keep me in a lifestyle to which I have become accustomed” types. I accepted that because I knew it was her parents that had made her this way, and that these learned behaviours could be unlearned just by existing in real life, and she truly had a wonderful side, she could be generous, and loving, and truly cared about the people she allowed into her life. I think this also played into her entitled parent status though, because she expected others to be as generous as she could be, and was fiercely and blindly protective of our children, unable to see how she/ they are in the wrong until after the fact when I had explained it to her in great and excruciating detail. All this to say, she had a big disconnect between how she should behave and her expectations of others, vs what is actually appropriate, and realistic expectations of strangers. With that picture painted, here’s what happened.

We were at Tesco’s with my youngest daughter who has mild autism, and struggles to understand social situations. You may also know that people with autism have a distorted sense of self, and can be very self-centred. My daughter collects Funko Pops, and is currently obsessed with Harry Potter, she needed the Luna Lovegood with the lion headdress one, and every time we went into Tesco’s she would run to the toy aisle to see if they had it. We could have ordered it online, but we promised to get her it if it was there, and this hope made it far easier to manage having her end whatever activity she was doing at home, and to get her in the car. She struggles with transitions, and these can be hugely stressful for her.

So on this occasion, we arrive at Tesco’s and she runs right to the aisle. We follow behind at a distance to allow her time to browse without us looking over her shoulder. She’s been out of site for no longer than a minute when we hear her scream. We both ran over in a panic and find my daughter trying to pry the coveted pop out of another young girls hands. This young girl is in a wheelchair, and clearly has severe learning difficulties. I know you will judge my daughter here, but please do keep in mind that she has autism and associated learning disabilities herself. The girl in the wheelchair is trying to hold the pop out of reach, and her mum is standing to the side of her, trying to get between my daughter and hers without touching my daughter. A trying task. My wife stomps over and immediately starts on the mother “Don’t you dare touch my daughter” the Mum, with the patience of a saint looks at my wife and says “I’m not, I am trying to stop her hurting my daughter” I get a bit annoyed at this, because my daughter has never been violent with anyone, but can see why she would make this assumption given what was happening. My wife did not see this. She instantly started shouting “how dare you, what do you think she is, some kind of monster, she would never hurt an R****ded person she just wants the pop, if you would just give it to her, she would leave you alone. “ she looks at the girl and says “give it to her now” the mum instantly steps into my wife’s face and very calmly warns my wife that if she calls her daughter that again, she will beat the shit out of her. My wife looks at me for help, but I just look at here. The truth is I was about to intervene on behalf of the mother. I was so full of rage at my wife at this point that she would call a child this, given our own daughters issues, and how upset she (my daughter) had gotten when she had been called this in the past. I knew right then that this woman I had chosen to marry was a vile human being. They argued back and forth for a little while with no real resolution meanwhile, I have grabbed and picked up my daughter to stop her trying to get to the young girl with the pop. The argument was pretty mundane the usual things you’d expect, the mother explaining why she didn’t have to give up the toy as her daughter had picked it up first (we later found out there was loads left on the shelf, it wasn’t even the only one) and my then wife had the audacity to tell this woman that my daughter needed it because she has autism and her daughter didn’t. At this point I got fed up of listening and did intervene. I cut my wife off and apologized profusely to the mother, and offered to buy her daughter the pop. She not-so-politely, but also understandably, declined. As she made her way away my wife began screaming at me about how I should have defended her, and how I was out of order for not. I explained to my wife that I would have nothing to say to her until we got to the car. Noticed the remaining Luna pops, and let my daughter choose another. My wife followed me around, trying to engage me in conversation but I ignored her for the most part, and reiterated that I had no intention of speaking to her. I had never been so disgusted by anyone in my life, and the idea that this woman was the mother of my child made me feel sick. I later explained to her why she was wrong, and she began to get it, but the damage had been done. I could not be with someone who would use that word to describe someone who had it even worse than our daughter. We ended up divorcing over something else some weeks later, but in the back of my mind then, and now this was the beginning of the end.

I know this didn’t have much of a climactic conclusion, but I wanted to share as I think you guys will all find it interesting enough.

I'm hugely shocked at the attention this has gotten, and I'm glad that the majority of you fine folks seem to agree with the action I chose to take. However a couple of quick edits to update everyone. For this asking why she still got the toy I'll copy and paste a reply I offered someone else who asked earlier - I had to have a think about it before I got her the pop. Had things not escalated they way they did I would have explained to her why her behaviour was wrong, had her apologize, and then explain back to me why her behaviour was wrong before I even considered it. However with the way things had happened, I decided that it would be unfair to not get it for her when it was not her fault that things had escalated and I had been prevented from going through that process with her. It was made abundantly clear though that A) this was not a reward and B) that her behaviour was unacceptable

For those asking about custody, we share custody but that's a whole other story. If you can point me in the direction of a subreddit where a story of someone trying to prevent sharing custody would be appropriate, I'll post there. Or maybe I'll add it here but not right now because I'm on my phone right now and wouldn't want to type it all out.

Also, cuestar just covered this in a video which I thought was quite cool as it was his videos that even let me know this subreddit exists.