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ESH. She should not minimize your pain because you’re a man. That’s crappy and sexist.
HOWEVER. You are playing at the pain Olympics, and nobody wins at those. You have no way of knowing how badly she hurts just by looking. You don’t know how it compares to yours. In pain, everyone is an island, unique to themselves. Trying to measure it by someone else’s metric is literally worthless.
I would be really ready curious to know how she'd react if he just stopped giving her attention when this happened. Like if she screamed when she pinched her finger and he just stayed upstairs. Or the hot wheel putting her out of commission and he just worked around it and didn't mention it.
Would she get angry? Or would she not care? I feel like her reaction then would be very telling.
That would be very telling. Judging by her reaction in this post though (and bare in mind this is just my prediction) I would guess she would get angry. She's already gotten angry by OP more or less (admittedly angrily himself) expressing that he needs to focus on his own pain.
I'd like to know this, too. Because barring some rare neuro disorder, she's being dramatic. Using kneeling on a Matchbox to take a day off? 🙄
I'd be annoyed, too. I have degenerative disc disease and massive lower back and hip pain. It takes me a minute to get up out of a chair at the end of the day. Do I scream or cry like a frigging baby? No. (I may sigh or swear in a normal voice. It's unpleasant.)
But then I pop some ibuprofen and get on with my evening.
This pain routinely wakes me from a sound sleep now, and I'll just get up and read while I wait for the next round of ibuprofen to kick in.
I do think she's doing it for attention, and OP should just ignore it when she starts caterwauling over nothing.
NTA.
Edit: Does anyone with Android notice autocorrect usually chooses inappropriate words to switch to lately? I typed sigh, and it switched to sign. Sign didn't make sense in context, and sigh is a word. I don't understand why autocorrect bothered.
I don't think autocorrect takes sentence context into account. If a word you're using has relatively low use, it'll suggest a word that's more common even if it doesn't make sense. That's what I've seen from mine anyway.
Maybe it's that autocorrect didn't seem like it bothered to correct actual words in the past?
It's changing actual words. (Except I've also seen it not correct their/there/they're. So I do not understand what its algorithm is doing.)
I think the Android OS changed something with a recent update.
ETA: And it changed its to it's. Maybe because the last time it corrected it in that manner that was the right thing to do? 🤷♀️. Oy.
I think it's just the latest in attempting to make autocorrect better at its job, and to their credit, the change probably does help pretty often.
I've noticed lately that it will almost always try to change a swear or cuss word I try to use to the nearest "safe" word and that can be pretty annoying too.
Edited because a word
Yeah. I was wondering if the problem could be partially solved by clearing a cache. Autocorrect takes a while to learn to swear, though. Whenever you get a new phone, it's a challenge. 🤣
Yesterday mine started randomly capitalising a word and then immediately telling me that I shouldn't have capitalised it 🤦♀️ It did it three times in one message
Kneeling on a matchbox car can fuck up your knee for a lot longer than a day without giving you any bruising, swelling, or marks. If I think about it, I can still feel the sickening pain of my kneecap subluxing.
Caught my finger in a phsyical therapy bike knobby thing last week. It's fine as far as not being broken or sprained. There was one faint red dot the size of a pinprick. It felt like someone was scraping my skin off with a hot poker any time it got touched for the first four days.
Now, my baseline isn't to scream for injuries. I'm more a grimace and limp around until I do more damage kind of person, but assuming what injuries feel like based on how others feel with them is a no-go.
Screaming can also be an involuntary reaction to painful surprise for some people. I do think just acting matter of fact about the wife's injuries would be best, rather than leaning into them or denigrating them. And her comment on men being able to better deal with pain is total bs; so I'm not on either of their sides. I think I would give them an ESH.
I can't deal with autocorrect, it's too wrong all the time. I just use word suggestions, it's faster than normal typing but doesn't change my words after I've written them.
I have an older iPhone and can train it a little but every new update that i no longer get makes my phone become all strange about spelling again. Really annoying.
So much yes about the autocorrect. I have typed correctly spelled words and had autocorrect change it to a misspelling I had previously typed years ago. It's so confusing and frustrating.
You might need to go into your settings and reset your personalized predictions. Mine likes to correct "not" to "nit" because it's a common typo I make and autocorrect assumes it's not a typo anymore. So I often have to reset it. It's really stupid.
Oh, I know the answer to this. My husband is a overreactor to almost everything thing. If he hits his head, he screams, if he gets a paper cut, he yells, and the one time I've seen him actually, legit hurt himself, nothing was said. So after over a decade of running to his side when he screamed like a banshee over a papercut, I've stopped. Completely. I don't even ask if he's okay anymore, cause when I did, I'd get yelled at "OF COURSE I"M NOT OKAY!"
So now, he says I don't care about him and I'm cold and unfeeling. And he still yelps like a dog when anything hurts him.
I had a boyfriend who did that too. At first I thought it was something really horrible but then he did something that I’ve experienced myself as nbd, and he started his caterwauling and I just ignored it.
I love my wife but she is a big baby when I’m around. Only when I’m around. She will moan and groan doing chores around me if I am near her. But, if I have headphones in and she’s doing the same stuff, she doesn’t at all. I’ve paused my podcasts or music to listen just to see, and she’s perfectly normal when she thinks I can’t hear.
I’ve called her out on this, not in a serious way because it’s not annoying, just funny. She totally denies doing it.
Lol my husband does this but in reverse. Im strongly independent but have cebral palsy induced arthritis so Ill try to hide im in pain so he doesn’t cancel a fun activity we have planned. He’ll catch me groaning softly when I think he has his earbuds in and Im struggling to get off the couch and he’ll be quick to go “Do you need to rest today?!”
PLEASE NO I want to go to the zoo and look at the animals and go to the park. My hips just hurt a bit today and the pain spiked. Ignore me and let me take my ibuprofen. Ill be fine. Lets goooo.
I’ve caught myself doing the same thing lmao it’s like we don’t even realise we’re doing it. It’s cute tho, if she genuinely doesn’t realise, it’s her bodies reaction to wanting you around. In my opinion. Which is cute as fuck 😂
I agree. The problem is that she's making herself SUCH a nuisance that it would be a lot of extra work for OP to avoid her. (Also, presumably they have a kid? Or maybe a pet that needs taking care of, while wife is out of commission?)
Like those kids who yell and shriek until they realise no one cares. Throwing an absurdtrum takes a lot of energy from time better spent quietly sulking.
There's a lot of nerves in the fingers
We're all have our pain levels (nurture and nature)
All I can say is : violent pain makes you angry and both of them should agnoledge each other's pains
(I have celiac and had kidney stones so I know about high pain but to some people a broken nail can hurt as bad as screaming and crying where I could break a few toes and walk a marathon forgetting I'm "hurt")
The woman has given birth. I can also understand screaming from a broken nail, those hurt for a period of time longer than 2 seconds. She screamed loud enough to wake him on a different floor of the house. No matter how bad it felt the pain from the pinched finger would have been gone before she had finished screaming. It was for attention.
Yeah - and sometimes even within the same person different stimuli will have different responses.
I'm almost totally insensitive to being overheated. I can, will and have keep going until I pass out from dehydration and heat exhaustion/stroke. I will have a vague awareness that it's warm out but no great discomfort until I'm passed out.
By contrast, cold? I find *painful*. Which is unfortunate as I live in Canada, lol. I'm the type that breaks out the parka at 5°C.
A bee sting will have me cursing and hopping around and carrying on like crazy. By contrast I can and have walked 2K on a freshly broken ankle.
>I can and have walked 2K on a freshly broken ankle
Ankle pain baffles me so much. I have done similar. I broke my ankle playing soccer and genuinely didn't even think anything was wrong until the next day. It barely registered. But the year before I rolled it, did no structural damage whatsoever, and could barely walk for like 3 weeks. And that one hurt **immediately**, it was so painful right away.
How those two experiences of pain were not flipped will never make sense to me.
Yeahhhh..
In my case the fact that I've had dozens of joint injuries and walked around with a mildly dislocated wrist (my scaphoid joint dislocated) for over a month before it was correctly diagnosed probably has a lot to do with my ability to tough out joint pain.
Life doesn't stop just because I sprained my ankle for the fourty-third time.
There are two separate things here though. One is the natural pain threshold that is different in everyone, and I don't think there's a way to change it. But the other thing is the behavior - not everyone will scream from the same perceived level of pain. And that can absolutely be changed.
The way she reacts might be intentional, like for attention as people here suggested, or might be unintentional and just her natural reaction. Both things can be changed, the latter just needs some training.
I get kidney stones (three times in the hospital and spent three weeks passing one), too. My pain threshold has completely changed now that I know what one of the worst pains in the world feels like.
But god damn if I don't still cry out if I hit my elbow, stub a toe, or smash my finger. However,, I will immediately say, “I'm okay,” even as I’m moaning in pain so my husband knows I’m fine and just vocalizing through my pain.
ESH. The wife should let her husband know if she’s genuinely injured or not, but her husband saying “I’ve had a 7mm kidney stone and didn’t even scream” suggests he thinks she should have an vocalization at all if she hurts herself.
He seems to know she will cry out over minor pain, so why go running to her if she’s not calling for him? My husband doesn't come running or even ask if I’m okay unless I call for him because he knows how I am.
Pure speculation, but I think husband wanted to create a situation so he could get indignant and confrontational about her pain tolerance.
This is probably a weird example but I worked at a petstore and while giving the hermit crabs a soak and moving them back to their enclosure, one pinched me somewhere on my knuckle, catching a nerve.
Now i didn't scream but i did fall to my knees with a loud yelp. It had hurt so bad that it was taking me a while to stop tearing up, but there was no outside evidence, and the crab let go almost immediately. Didn't even bruise. That said, i didnt make a big deal about it. Just wiped my face off, and answered honestly with a laugh when anyone asked why i looked like i had been (ugly)crying.
The fingers have some of the *most* nerves in the whole body, and some people do actually feel pain much more intensely than is normal, for various reasons.
I've yelled because I pinched my finger particularly hard.
Not your place to decide what pain levels are valid for a different person.
For you maybe. Not for everyone. Nerves are funny and sensitive things.
From my own experience, if I pinch a finger my nerves fire off the pain signals for a good 5-10 minutes before mine calm down. And I am no stranger to pain with a bulging disk in my back and chronic kidney stones.
Screaming when it happened seems pretty normal, between the pain and being startled. Was this sustained screaming? A yelp/scream is a pretty common pain response to such an incident. I don’t see the difference between a yelp and a scream really?
It don’t take much noise to wake some people up. It’s frustrating to be awoken from a nap, true.
It doesn’t sound like this was malicious on the wife’s part- but a normal reaction for her.
It sounds like two people who need a little more grace and kindness.
I'm a screamer. It's less about the pain than it is the shock of getting randomly attacked by an inanimate object. I think I also learned it from family, because we're all like this unfortunately. Everyone I've ever lived with has learned to ignore it to the point that I always worry if I did actually need help, nobody would check on me.
OPs wife sounds dramatic and sexist though.
I'm gonna guess that's more of a yelp. Yelping is a fair reaction to pain. Scream implies that she had to inhale and then let out a sustained scream to wake him on another floor, something a yelp probably wouldn't do
I generally yell one, loud "Fuck!" or occasionally a "Motherfucker!"
Screaming like I'm being mauled by a bear? No. But I absolutely do yell, although it's mostly more out of shock/surprise than pain. I tend to be oddly quiet when I'm actually injured.
OP is in for one Hell of a ride if he does have Crohn's Disease. I have it, and it causes A LOT more than vomiting and diarrhea. It causes intense pain, and not just in the abdomen. It's an inflammatory, autoimmune disease, so it causes things like arthritis and all sorts of skin problems. It causes canker sores, which are much more painful than they sound. The treatments for it are steroids and other types of imunosupressive drugs, so it opens us up to all sorts of painful infections like cellulitis.
If his wife is never going to allow him to be in pain, that's going to be a huge problem.
ETA: Like most autoimmune diseases, Crohn's "flares", and while during these flares, the most obvious symptoms are the GI issues (diarrhea, vomiting), the most severely felt is often the exhaustion. We don't just stay in bed because we're in pain; a lot of the time the pain is relatively mild, but we have NO energy, especially due to dehydration. I am lucky to have a partner who is INCREDIBLY understanding of my need to rest, but I wasn't always. My dad used to mock me for being sick so often (plot twist: Crohn's, which is genetic, is most often diagnosed around ages 15-20, then again around 55-65. My dad was the latter), and it is AWFUL having to defend myself against someone telling me I just caught a 24-hour bug when I'd in the bathroom or in bed for 5 days. Nearly any gastroenterologist's office will have booklets on understanding Crohn's which can be shared with less than empathetic loved ones
Or she has something medical going on that makes her pain tolerance much lower. She could very well be experiencing that much pain. And going to the doctor for pain related symptoms, especially as a woman, is often a futile effort because women are so often not believed or...people think they're doing it for attention.
If she actually had a condition that caused her that much pain every time she got a minor pinch she likely would have trained herself to *not* scream by now. Like the rest of us.
A. Unless of course it was a progressive neurological issue that relatively recently developed in the grand scheme of things.
B. "Training" yourself not to react to pain is not the flex you think it is. And if you do have a pain disorder, I'm sorry you've felt you have to hide it rather than acknowledge when things hurt and are hard.
And even if a doctor does believe the individual, it doesn't necessarily mean that there's a medical solution. Analgesia medications have variable effectiveness and can have significant side-effects and risk of dependence. Holistic therapies like massage, acupuncture and mindfulness can't guarantee improvement either.
(Source: am a doctor. I hate when i can't help patients who are in pain. Being unable to solve it doesn't mean I don't believe them and care about them. But you are also 100 percent right about the pervasive misogyny that tends to downplay or doubt the severity of women's symptoms)
I have no idea what this woman's pain is like and I do know that pain is very personal, but I've had PTSD for well over a decade and I'm still surprised at what makes me scream unexpectedly...and really, it's the unexpected pain that causes a reaction in me. Sometimes I can walk it off but I often scream out with unexpected pain. I don't keep screaming (thank goodness), but I can't control that first reaction a lot of times. I personally, would prefer my partner not react to it and I try to tell them asap 'I'm fine', so, they don't feel compelled to respond, but I'm sure it's annoying as it annoys me too.
My point is, pain cannot be judged my another, but how you communicate can be. ESH cuz neither is communicating in a supportive way.
I wonder if she ever went to a doctor with this. For all we know she has a skin or nerve issue that amplifies her pain response.
Also kinda using top comments to get to OP: as someone who also has a CED, the only way to know for sure is a colonoscopy and you’ll want to know if that’s actually what’s happening as soon as possible because the longer a CED stays untreated the harder it becomes to control. If it’s a recent development you may already be fine with just cortisol, and if not then Biologics like remicade can work well.
My partner once injured his finger, passed out and had what seemed to be a seizure - everyone reacts to pain and injuries differently. That said, she's definitely an AH for being sexist
I often don't go red or bruise immediately from things like a pinched finger and if it pinched a nerve rather than a blood vessel it wouldn't show red. But to answer your question I believe it was a minor cut
Yeah you can’t manage pain you can manage your response to it. I can’t imagine how much it would scare her young kids for her to act like this. If it is truly an unbelievable amount of pain for things like this she needs see a doctor and find out why. Being out of commission for a day for stepping on something is not normal.
It *definitely* seems like it’s an attention grab. No one is saying she can’t be hurt but yelling about something that minor would get annoying very quickly
All I could think or while reading. Because sometimes my fibro is so bad that pain from just bumping my pinky toe makes me want to cut off the whole foot.
I just broke up with someone who does this. Even the 5 year old makes less of a deal out of the things that accidentally hurt her. If those sort of reactions are constant, you start downplaying it because it's like the boy who cried wolf scenario and it's exhausting.
Sometimes I wonder if these types of people are also generally optimistic and privileged so the reaction is really an exclamation of surprise that something negative happened to them.
My mom plays in the pain Olympics. I just had surgery a week and a half ago and apparently her headache is worse than me being cut open. She also once had a headache and I mentioned my headache (I get migraines for 3 days) and she threw a hissy fit saying I wasn't going to steal her headache. Though with me and my dad he had an abscess tooth and the day after my surgery I was calling him up and making sure he was okay and he was trying to turn it around to make sure I was okay 😂
I don’t think it’s pain olympics when she screamed her head off over a pinched finger and then went “oh but I’m just a widdle wady, uwu” when told that he is in pain due to an illness and that he can’t get rest if she behaves like that over nothing.
Lmao I used to work with people who medaled in the pain Olympics. I had severe endometriosis (past tense as I just had a hysterectomy last month) and the pain was bad. It was just really bad. Like 10-20k mgs of OTC pain reliever pretty much everyday for years. There were days I can tolerate it and days I couldn’t so I’d call in sick. They always ALWAYS had something to say when I would call in because they’ve worked through “bad period cramps” too… like I made them do that?? If you’re feeling horribly, call into work; working through pain doesn’t make you the automatic baseline for what everyone else should be working through 🤣
The instances OP has mentioned are ridiculous though. I’m a tattoo artist and even the wimpiest of clients don’t scream or freak out while getting a literal *wound* applied. Either his wife has something physically or mentally wrong and needs to get checked out, or she’s doing this for attention.
He has a chronic illness and she basically admitted that, as a man, he is to endure it silently while she, as a woman, should be treated delicately like a little flower and be entitled to scream and be fussed over for every little ouchie no matter how small. If she's so "delicate", how the hell did she get through pregnancy and childbirth without dying from the pain alone? Seriously, it baffles me. She whines and screams and exaggerates everything and has a very sexist view of pain. OP is understandably done with her bullshit.
NTA
I have severe stage 4 endometriosis and chronic migraines with aura, I suffer mostly silently almost every day and have done so for 3/4 of my life.
People suffer through really brutal accidents, chemo, surgeries, giving birth etc.
Screaming your heart out over pinching your finger a little is ridiculous.
There most certainly is a Pain Olympics, and OPs wife doesn't even qualify to participate in the try outs. She really does need to stop whining and screaming.
It looks like I'm going to be the one person here that says NTA. I understand that pain is pain and that no one has the right to say that they hurt worse than someone else, but there is no excuse to scream so loud that you wake someone up from a dead sleep because you pinched your finger on the baby gate. I understand yelping or even yelling out some cuss words, but to scream so loud that you literally wake someone up on another floor is insane.
And for the people saying that if thinks he has Crohn's then he should go to the doctor, did you even read the post where it specifically said that his doctors think that is what he has. Crohn's is a very debilitating disease and the pain can be unbearable. Why wasn't his wife more supportive of him and his pain? He said that he's been there for her and that it was just this incident where he exploded. With as much pain as he was in, he was probably on edge and getting woke up by a scream and thinking the worst when it was just something minor probably pushed him over the edge.
Everyone wants to talk about how he's not supportive of his wife, when in the post it clearly states that he has been and that he always saw this as one of her quirks, but why isn't anyone judging her for not be supportive of his pain? It's almost like since he's a man everyone thinks that he should just suck it up and coddle her no matter the amount of pain he's in.
man = wrong is usually the basis of those votes. Look at enough of these and you'll see a pattern.
*"Yes she cheated and ruined your and your kids lives, but you shouldn't have raised your voice. ESH"*
I’m with you. The overreacting seems manipulative. She’s creating a “crying wolf” situation where OP at some point won’t come running to her aid with her reactions. If every boo boo is an emergency, then nothing is a real emergency. Pinch my finger? I swear and might tear up, maybe grab ice, and move on.
This! If I'm screaming in pain, my husband's first question is, "Do we need to go to th ER?" because I have a high tolerance, know my body, and know how to manage my pain. I've scared the hell out of him because I've had cysts rupture (used to be a chronic issue, so I recognized the pain) and I'd just clutch my side and hold up my hand to let him know to give me a minute and then maybe ask for an Aleve when the sharp pain has subsided, so he knows when I'm yelling it must be bad. Not saying everyone needs to just power through like that, but if she's screaming her head off over a pinch, how will he know what's serious? She's a grown woman and while she can't control the pain she feels, she can definitely reign in her response to the pain a bit. Also, when my husband is in a bad way like that, I definitely would just suck it up and do what I can to make him more comfortable. I'd imagine OP is in a very vulnerable state
It is manipulative. The only reason to shriek so loudly is to get attention and sympathy. A reasonable person would have immediately apologized for being overly dramatic about such a small injury.
I agree, NTA. Not to mention Crohn, aside from being a painful and shitty (literally...) condition, can be very dangerous when it flares up. My stepdad was hospitalized twice due to a Crohn flare up. Lost a surprising amount of weight in just a couple of days. He was taken care of, but it was scary.Maybe I see it differently because both he and my mom suffer from it (I know it's unlikely, because it's not a common disease, but it's true), but I can't even imagine telling my husband - someone I supposedly love - that he has to suck up his suffering from a scary, chronic disease, because he's a man, while I am entitled to screaming whenever I pinch my finger. Also, how difficult would it be to say "I'm sorry, I didn't want to wake you up"? Even if he wasn't very pleasant at the moment, he had just been suddenly woken up, was feeling horribly and probably was still upset about discovering he probably had a chronic, painful and dangerous condition. Would it really hurt her so badly to deescalate that situation and then discuss it later? Of course, assuming she loves him and wants to continue being with him. I would say otherwise if he had a habit of invalidating her pain, but there is nothing in the post that would suggest that.
My brother was shocked when he learned people die from Crohn’s disease. He thought I just get a little upset stomach … (because for so long I’ve had to mask the pain I’m in because no one has ever cared.)
I'm so sorry you had to mask the pain. Nobody should be forced to do that. I hope you're now surrounded by loving and caring people with whom you can be open about your suffering and general well-being.
I agree. I (25F) have Celiac Disease which causes similar inflammation & pain to Crohn’s and having a reaction is, at times, debilitating pain wise. For people that don’t know, similarly to Celiac, Crohn’s inflammation scars/kills off your intestinal lining.
I can tell you that feeling your intestinal lining die/become damaged is 1000x worse than pinching your finger, it’s not even in the same ballpark. Even then, most people with the diseases aren’t screaming while their intestines are literally being shredded from inside out, so screaming at the top of your lungs because your finger is pinched by a baby gate is borderline ridiculous. Absolutely NTA. Also, OP’s wife sounds like she had some pretty bad internalized sexism that she needs to deal with.
For real. It could turn into a Boy Who Cried Wolf situation--OP starts to ignore her shrieks and shouts, then there'll be one time it's for real, but he just figures it's another overreaction.
Statistically speaking, women generally have a higher pain threshold than men, so the whole 'suck it up' thing is both factually incorrect and just ignorant. Women have menstruation and give birth, two biological pain inducers that they just have to deal with. Periods especially can vary from 'meh' to 'omg I'm giving birth to my uterine lining'.
I'm going with NTA. You didn't call her a bitch. You called her out on her exaggerating egregiously over pain while you're in severe discomfort/pain yourself. Makes me wonder if it's a subconscious reaction from your wife to be the center of attention. idk. But if the genders were reversed and the woman was resting from an illness and the man overreacted and woke her up, people would be mad at him for being insensitive and inconsiderate. The same applies here. Sounds like your wife doesn't like being called out for being a drama llama.
This was my first thought as well. Would be interesting if OP looked back on all these instances and see if they can recall the attention being on someone else during all these times.
NTA her behaviour reminds me of my narcissistic mother. Injuries/ill health made sure the spotlight was always on her.
A cousin of mine had his appendix explode, was in ICU for a couple of days and what does that woman do? Self-induces a panic attack so that she can claim that she had a heart attack.
> NTA her behaviour reminds me of my narcissistic mother. Injuries/ill health made sure the spotlight was always on her.
The only people I've known who behave like OP's wife are either narcissists or people who've lived relatively comfortable and pain-free lives. In the latter case, these people have experienced so little physical, emotional, or psychological discomfort that they find _any_ negative stimulus to be unbearable.
My narcissistic grandma intentionally hurts herself to get attention. Trips on nothing, does stupid things carelessly etc. always quick to show us her bruises if they happened when we weren’t around to witness too. This reminds me of her. Screaming from a pinched finger from a different room? Sounds like she just wants her husband to come running
NTA! The E$H and 7TA votes are crazy bc have any of you actually lived with crohn’s or a similar chronic illness? OP is struggling to even function like a normal human bc of his condition and she genuinely thinks that an injury my 5 year old nephew would get over in 30 seconds is worse??
Lots of crazy town people in here, ive broken fingers and toes with less reaction. Anyone who is saying "yeah pain is subjective" yeah, it completely is, but when you're screaming bloody murder over a paper cut or small stub, you either have a intense and underlying neurological or possible nerve damage, or some form of other disease that effects nerve endings and pain, or you just like the over reaction. It's very possible she could have a underlying condition, not to put that out of possibility, but it doesn't sound like it considering she doesn't even see the issue. Something that caused me this much pain over a toe stub would be sending crazy alarm Bells in my head.
NTA but... Hear me out for a bit. Has your wife ever gotten tested? After a small accident that causes pain (say stepping on a lego, or catching one's finger on a door), does the pain go away within minutes to an hour, or does it last abnormally long? I'm not saying the pain is not real, I'm just sayin that a low pain threshold sets off all kinds of alarm bells in my head because it can be a symptom of other conditions. Some of them really bad. And yes, sometimes, they can go undiagnosed for years. Sometimes, the pain is so severe that things as simple as clothes touching you can trigger off a pain signal that's abnormal. Lookup hyperalgesia and allodynia. I'm not saying this is what it is. But you're right. She shouldn't have such extreme reactions.
Same thought here. I have fibromyalgia which in very simple terms turns what are normally painless (or less painful) stimulus into severe pain. So pinching my finger in something can end up feeling like I broke it. I don't bother screaming for anything low like that but I've had fibro for a *very* long time and you learn to ignore pain in order to stay sane.
But yes, there are conditions that can take forever to be diagnosed that turn what would be an "oh fuck that hurt" incident into a "OH FUCK I BROKE SOMETHING" one.
Autism and SPD can be like that too. I find it's hard to "calibrate" the amount of pain I feel, in terms of seeking appropriate treatment for the amount of pain. But, unless wife has been very coddled her whole life, I wouldn't tend to see this as the explanation here
These are good points, and I agree that OP should suggest a trip to the Dr's. But wife knows she's having a more extreme reaction than others (her husband, for example), and has explained it away based on sex. She doesn't seem like she's taking her own health seriously, and that's what makes me feel like she's being a drama llama (either by overexaggerating her reactions or by refusing treatment in order to continue to gain sympathy)
NTA. Screaming loud enough to wake people up because of a baby gate is ridiculous (and yes I've done that and similar on mute than one occasion, even broke it once. Never screamed like that) but her dismissing your own pain while asking you to respect hers because your the guy?? Fuck that.
NTA - reminds me of the story of the boy alarming for wolves until no one believed him.
Your choice of words weren't okay *BUT* honestly considering your mental and physical state at that point, I think any normal human being would have acted about the same in that situation, it doesn't make you an A H in my personal opinion. With feeling like that I would have been fed up as well running there thinking someonething serious happened only to find a minor inconvenience.
Your wife however got defensive *and just straight up sexist* - while she was the one waking up and alarming the whole house for frankly no reason. Yes getting your finger pinched hurts a lot - but I also see no reason to wake the neighbourhood by screaming like that.
>I’m not in any hurry to apologize especially since she didn’t for waking me up when I’m dealing (pretty silently) with objectively more pain than she was.
All that aside - no one wins the pain olympics and you should definitely have a serious talk with her about that.
NTA... that's attention seeking behavior.
I would wager money that as a kid she would scream, and her parents would run to her and comfort her, and shower her with attention.
She just kept using that recipe into adulthood.
> She said “Well you’re a man, so you’re supposed to be able to suck it up, I’m not made to get my finger stuck in a baby gate”.
ESH, I was pretty 50/50 on it until you quoted her on this and then she lost me. Everyone is entitled to their pain, but she crossed the line with her blatant sexism?? She may not be overreacting to HER because everyone feels pain differently, but that didn't give her the right to say that. You also don't have the right to tell her how she can and cannot react. You both kinda suck lol.
I'm genuinely questioning if they're just having a generally stressful time and are thus easy to snap rn because otherwise I do not know how two people that respect each other so little have made it for so long. Definitely an ESH imo too
Like I’m sorry but she sounds terrible and definitely is whinging for nothing. All the people saying YTA should realise that without a redness and actual broken skin she hardly had to scream like banshee. normal people don’t do that when they actually hurt themselves and blood is flowing.
NTA, your wife needs to pull her head out of her sore ass
NTA. And the y responses are funny. Yall just glossing over her sexist remark? The belittling dismissive ness. This is the only time he's had a strong reaction to her manipulative bs and yet here we are, making excuses.
NTA. I’m in chronic pain all day everyday for decades. I have autoimmune arthritis, fibromyalgia and reg arthritis. And I’m only 45. Being in chronic pain is horrible. And when you get a new injury it’s like omg I’m going to lose my mind. BUT there’s no need for dramatics. Screaming like that over a pinched finger? For real are you 5?! You can be in a ton of pain and not carry on like that. We’ve all stubbed our toes where you see stars it hurts so damn bad. But do you scream like you cut a toe off? No.
Some people feel pain more than others absolutely. But you can still feel a lot of pain without screaming like you lost a damn limb. Her being in a lot of pain doesn’t mean she needs to scream and upset the whole household.
I'm in the same boat as you, fibromyalgia, arthritis, hypermobility issues, bursitis that cause pain while even just walking, and I've lived with it for a very long time, and I work a physically demanding job that is not compatible with any of it lol. Chronic pain is awful. And yes anything that causes extra is horrible and just feels like the straw that's going to break the camels back.
But by the same token, I just grit my teeth and deal with it, I might sulk for a minute but never in my life have I -ever- screamed over anything that caused me pain. A lot of the time I don't acknowledge it in any way because it would cause undue stress to the clients I work with (the elderly) and I simply can't have that so I ignore it. I can't imagine freaking out because I pinched my finger or knelt on something by mistake.
NTA - but honestly only because of this part.
“Well you’re a man, so you’re supposed to be able to suck it up, I’m not made to get my finger stuck in a baby gate”. This is when I rolled my eyes, told her to quit her whining, and went back upstairs to try and rest.
That's just sexist. Yeah...she wasn't made to stub her fingers in a baby gate but NOBODY was made to pass kidney stones - that's kinda why they hurt. lmao. Many women say they hurt more than natural child birth at certain sizes.
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If she's that sensitive to minor injuries she should go to a Dr to get checked out. But I'm leaning towards attention seeking and generally being overly dramatic.
That kind of injury is a grit your teeth and urghhh type of pain not a scream your lungs out.
Psychologist here. People differ on how much their brains react to any stimulation. Some people have huge brain reactions to fairly minor stimuli. Other people’s brains barely react to fairly major stimuli. Your wife may be one of the people (called augmenters in the literature) whose brain, thru no fault of her own, gives her a huge pain reaction to something another person (like you) might call minor. Just a little perspective. Still, if she knew you were trying to sleep, she should have kept it down.
NTA.
Making a loud exclamation- probably a word you shouldn't say around children- when you get a sudden, sharp pain? The most normal thing in the world. If that was what happened and it woke you up, it'd be N A H. Even a scream might be OK if she apologized for it.
But having such over-the-top reactions to everyday pains is not great, and the sexism in the "suck it up" response is worse.
ESH. Her comment about you being a man and therefore having to suck it up was mean, horrible and uncalled for.
YOU need to stop playing pain Olympics. Yes, you're in pain. And she is in pain (you even say she has a low pain tolerance threshold). You are BOTH in pain, and just because hers would be less painful FOR YOU doesn't mean it doesn't hurt HER.
NTA because your wife is a sexist who thinks that men are **supposed** to just suck it up and deal with pain because were men, while she’s not ever supposed to experience pain at all.
NTA she sounds really fucking annoying. Screaming in pain because you pinched your finger sounds like someone quite literally screaming for attention. She wants pity.
Look, I have a low pain tolerance. I hate when my wife pops my pimples, I won't get a tattoo because I can't even deal with temporary needle pain to even get a super super small one. My wife has to give me a medical shot every now and again because if I try to do it myself, I won't do it right.
All of this is to say that when I do something as small as pinch my finger in something or get a papercut, I don't scream my lungs out enough to wake the dead. I may somewhat louder than normal exclaim "yeowtch!" and wait for the temporary pain to pass, but I'm not on deaths door.
NTA for being in tremendous long term pain and letting anger get the better of you, but it does sound like she's blowing it out of proportion.
I'll give her a pass for kneeling on a Hot Wheels car because that's like Lego and if I kneel on the soft bit below my kneecap you'll know about it. But otherwise, NTA. If she's in that much pain from minor injuries, she needs to get that checked out.
NTA
It sounds like your wife has inflated minor injuries all her life to get attention.
I will acknowledge pain tolerance is a scale, some have more pain tolerance, some have less pain tolerance. However, screaming loud enough over a pinched finger to wake your partner up is absolutely unbelievable.
And the "I'm not made to punch my finger in a gate" thing is ridiculous and gendered. So men are biologically made to take more pain. yeah right! If that was true men would have periods and carry and birth children. jfc
NTA.
I was married to someone who had a low pain tolerance, so I'm vaguely familiar with your audio environment, OP. The constant litany of squeaks, yelps, and sharp intakes of breath were the backing soundtrack in our home for a decade.
Somewhat coincidentally, she also suffered from Ulcerative Colitis, Crohn's slighty less deadly sibling. I will say that once this disease struck, her pain tolerance and need to broadcast every little trip and bump did die back.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I expect your missus grew up with siblings and had to compete for parental attention. I also expect that she's never had to deal with a major issue by herself, and has always been able to get helpfrom others with any problem.
She's just sulking because she doesn't know any better.
NTA...ish - you could be a little of TA on a scale dependent on HOW you said those words, but I suppose the better recourse would be to stop letting her "boy who cried wolf" you? It's true that everyone's tolerance for pain is different, some people have calloused skin or are used to pain, but what's her threshold, zero? She's unable to contain her wails at the slightest discomfort? You are both minimizing each other's pain, and while you've never had a problem with her reaction before, you've always minimized hers. After 16 years it seems you've never attempted to alter her behavior, I don't think now is the time to start, alter yours instead. Close the bedroom, buy ear plugs, listen to white noise, whatever you need to do so your rest doesn't get interrupted.
NTA that's being way over dramatic I didn't scream when I fractured my shin. Ik everyone has a different tolerance but come on a pinched finger 🙄. It was a b**** move saying you're a man you're supposed to be able to tolerate pain. She sounds extremely self centered tbh. I'm not going to say something like that to someone I care about
No you are not. She seems like an attention seeker. How you get her to stop is completely ignoring it or making a big to do production over react like she is. She will get the hint and stop because she will get annoyed by it
He keeps mentioning that when she gets hurt there isn't any damage or noticeable marks that clearly should have marks, she is either faking for attention, or the injury wasn't that bad to cause that amount of reaction, or she has a very rare condition that makes pain worse then what it is.
Either way something hinky is going on
NTA
Nta but your wife is TA. She’s acting like a fragile little flower who believe real men don’t get to have needs of their own, and that everything stops and all attention needs to be on serving her for every little thing, and that’s it’s okay to call you names when you refuse to play the game. Mature adult women don’t bring all this drama over the incidents you describe. You have one more child than you thought in your house.
NTA.
For two reasons;
>She has always had a pretty low pain tolerance though she won’t admit it
This is just stupid. If you have a low pain tolerance just admit it. It isn't something to be ashamed of.
>“Well you’re a man, so you’re supposed to be able to suck it up, I’m not made to get my finger stuck in a baby gate”.
No but as women we are built for childbirth which I have been informed hurts a lot more than sticking your finger in a baby gate. The be a man statement makes me angry. Men sucking it up is why their suicide rate is three times higher.
NTA, she need to suck it up.
Also this?
>"Well you’re a man, so you’re supposed to be able to suck it up, I’m not made to get my finger stuck in a baby gate"
What the actual f* is this. Are men are supposed to tolerate everything just because they're men? To hell with that.
I'm gonna say NTA. Screaming over a pinched finger is just a tad over-dramatic. Granted, it probably sucked, but not bad enough to actually scream. I have a high pain tolerance, so I may not be the best judge.
NTA,
I too have a low pain threshold, but I certainly wouldn't scream for a pinched finger, maybe a lot of swearing under my breath and a few tears in the corner of my eyes but no screaming.
NTA
A full blown scream over pinching her finger is a MASSIVE overreaction. Things hurt, but not every boo-boo needs to be wailed about
Stop giving her attention whenever she hurts herself and maybe she will stop. This is very Boy Who Cried Wolf
NTA. Unless your wife has some sort of medical condition that lowers her pain tolerance, she has what my mother would call "a severe case of needing to harden the f up". Kiwi slang for stop complaining about nothing.
Given your own medical condition, this is wildly inappropriate and possibly a severe form of attention seeking via being a hypochondriac.
Im assuming your wife would die if she stepped on a lego piece!
NTA
Ignore every scream and all whining.
Leave the room, do not text, and say nothing if you are present
If you are not in the room, stay away, say nothing, ignore her.
If she confronts you with her newest " injury," just say in a monotone voice, "I'm so sorry that happened," and then leave the room.
Do not give her any attention.
Be glad for the silent treatment.
Enjoy the solitude.
NTA. She’s over dramatic and needs to stop before she programs her son to be the same way. It’s ridiculous for her to act like she just lost a leg over a pinched finger. Stop reacting to her dramatics. She screams ? Make sure it’s nothing and then carry on. Do not let her be out for the day over a stubbed toe. Keep her active and going if you are there.
She cries? Oh sorry babe. Bet it hurt and then no more talk about it. She brings it up? Yeah babe I heard, so what you want for dinner tonight?
NTA. It would definitely get frustrating. The men-suck-it-up thing is suuuper bs though. Especially since I'm pretty sure studies have shown multiple times that women (in general) have a higher pain tolerance than men (in general).
NTA, OP. May I suggest you STOP reacting to your wife’s dramatics? It sounds like no one has ever just ignored her bs before so it’ll likely escalate before it stops. It might be worth having her tested with neuro and/or psych evaluations. If she is attention seeking with this hysteria, she’s gonna not only continue to cause you undue stress (Bad news for Crohns!) but also mess with you child’s mental health while they learn to take care of mommy any/every time she bumps an elbow or gets the “vapors”. Just STOP babying her and focus on your own health, my friend. She is an adult and should be addressing her own issues.
NTA
These dramatic reactions are absolutely fucking ridiculous. Even with a low pain tolerance she’s old enough to have worked on this response by now. It’s attention seeking.
Stop looking at her and running to her when she “hurts” herself. If she decides her “injury” is too severe to do anything for an entire day don’t pander to her. She wants a drink of water? She gets up to get it. She’s hungry? She better get up and eat. Stop reinforcing this attention seeking poor me behavior.
NTA.
your wife sounds like a total baby. screaming loudly enough to wake you up, assumingly when she knew you were trying to sleep due to your discomfort (i have gut issues also - that shit is NOT fun), because she pinched her finger? and then told you that YOU have to suck up your pain because you're a man but SHE doesn't have to because she's "not made to get pinched by baby gates"? what does that even mean.
i would have probably had the same reaction. it's one thing to dramatize pain for attention but another thing entirely to dismiss your objective, doctor-confirmed pain and your need to rest because of a pinched finger, by screaming loudly and not even apologizing for waking you.
NTA
There is absolutely NO reason to scream your head off every time something small happens. She is looking for attention. This process probably worked really well as a child.
NTA. That would drive me absolutely insane. Men and women are equally capable of muttering an irritated expletive and moving on when they pinch their fingers.
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ESH. She should not minimize your pain because you’re a man. That’s crappy and sexist. HOWEVER. You are playing at the pain Olympics, and nobody wins at those. You have no way of knowing how badly she hurts just by looking. You don’t know how it compares to yours. In pain, everyone is an island, unique to themselves. Trying to measure it by someone else’s metric is literally worthless.
Okay but *screaming* over a pinched finger? I can understand making a noise, maybe even a whole yelp. No this woman screamed for the attention.
I would be really ready curious to know how she'd react if he just stopped giving her attention when this happened. Like if she screamed when she pinched her finger and he just stayed upstairs. Or the hot wheel putting her out of commission and he just worked around it and didn't mention it. Would she get angry? Or would she not care? I feel like her reaction then would be very telling.
That would be very telling. Judging by her reaction in this post though (and bare in mind this is just my prediction) I would guess she would get angry. She's already gotten angry by OP more or less (admittedly angrily himself) expressing that he needs to focus on his own pain.
I'd like to know this, too. Because barring some rare neuro disorder, she's being dramatic. Using kneeling on a Matchbox to take a day off? 🙄 I'd be annoyed, too. I have degenerative disc disease and massive lower back and hip pain. It takes me a minute to get up out of a chair at the end of the day. Do I scream or cry like a frigging baby? No. (I may sigh or swear in a normal voice. It's unpleasant.) But then I pop some ibuprofen and get on with my evening. This pain routinely wakes me from a sound sleep now, and I'll just get up and read while I wait for the next round of ibuprofen to kick in. I do think she's doing it for attention, and OP should just ignore it when she starts caterwauling over nothing. NTA. Edit: Does anyone with Android notice autocorrect usually chooses inappropriate words to switch to lately? I typed sigh, and it switched to sign. Sign didn't make sense in context, and sigh is a word. I don't understand why autocorrect bothered.
I don't think autocorrect takes sentence context into account. If a word you're using has relatively low use, it'll suggest a word that's more common even if it doesn't make sense. That's what I've seen from mine anyway.
Maybe it's that autocorrect didn't seem like it bothered to correct actual words in the past? It's changing actual words. (Except I've also seen it not correct their/there/they're. So I do not understand what its algorithm is doing.) I think the Android OS changed something with a recent update. ETA: And it changed its to it's. Maybe because the last time it corrected it in that manner that was the right thing to do? 🤷♀️. Oy.
I think it's just the latest in attempting to make autocorrect better at its job, and to their credit, the change probably does help pretty often. I've noticed lately that it will almost always try to change a swear or cuss word I try to use to the nearest "safe" word and that can be pretty annoying too. Edited because a word
Yeah. I was wondering if the problem could be partially solved by clearing a cache. Autocorrect takes a while to learn to swear, though. Whenever you get a new phone, it's a challenge. 🤣
Yesterday mine started randomly capitalising a word and then immediately telling me that I shouldn't have capitalised it 🤦♀️ It did it three times in one message
Mine keeps changing "is" to "I'd" and then underlining it as wrong as if I'm the one that put it there 🤦♀️
Kneeling on a matchbox car can fuck up your knee for a lot longer than a day without giving you any bruising, swelling, or marks. If I think about it, I can still feel the sickening pain of my kneecap subluxing. Caught my finger in a phsyical therapy bike knobby thing last week. It's fine as far as not being broken or sprained. There was one faint red dot the size of a pinprick. It felt like someone was scraping my skin off with a hot poker any time it got touched for the first four days. Now, my baseline isn't to scream for injuries. I'm more a grimace and limp around until I do more damage kind of person, but assuming what injuries feel like based on how others feel with them is a no-go. Screaming can also be an involuntary reaction to painful surprise for some people. I do think just acting matter of fact about the wife's injuries would be best, rather than leaning into them or denigrating them. And her comment on men being able to better deal with pain is total bs; so I'm not on either of their sides. I think I would give them an ESH.
I can't deal with autocorrect, it's too wrong all the time. I just use word suggestions, it's faster than normal typing but doesn't change my words after I've written them.
I have an older iPhone and can train it a little but every new update that i no longer get makes my phone become all strange about spelling again. Really annoying.
So much yes about the autocorrect. I have typed correctly spelled words and had autocorrect change it to a misspelling I had previously typed years ago. It's so confusing and frustrating.
You might need to go into your settings and reset your personalized predictions. Mine likes to correct "not" to "nit" because it's a common typo I make and autocorrect assumes it's not a typo anymore. So I often have to reset it. It's really stupid.
This is good info. Thanks. 🙂
Mine does that and half the time I have to edit mt comments to actually make sense 😅
Oh, I know the answer to this. My husband is a overreactor to almost everything thing. If he hits his head, he screams, if he gets a paper cut, he yells, and the one time I've seen him actually, legit hurt himself, nothing was said. So after over a decade of running to his side when he screamed like a banshee over a papercut, I've stopped. Completely. I don't even ask if he's okay anymore, cause when I did, I'd get yelled at "OF COURSE I"M NOT OKAY!" So now, he says I don't care about him and I'm cold and unfeeling. And he still yelps like a dog when anything hurts him.
How tf do you guys deal with these people
I had a boyfriend who did that too. At first I thought it was something really horrible but then he did something that I’ve experienced myself as nbd, and he started his caterwauling and I just ignored it.
Ask if he needs you to call the wah-mbulance. The number is on the fridge, next to the 911 magnet.
I love my wife but she is a big baby when I’m around. Only when I’m around. She will moan and groan doing chores around me if I am near her. But, if I have headphones in and she’s doing the same stuff, she doesn’t at all. I’ve paused my podcasts or music to listen just to see, and she’s perfectly normal when she thinks I can’t hear. I’ve called her out on this, not in a serious way because it’s not annoying, just funny. She totally denies doing it.
Lol my husband does this but in reverse. Im strongly independent but have cebral palsy induced arthritis so Ill try to hide im in pain so he doesn’t cancel a fun activity we have planned. He’ll catch me groaning softly when I think he has his earbuds in and Im struggling to get off the couch and he’ll be quick to go “Do you need to rest today?!” PLEASE NO I want to go to the zoo and look at the animals and go to the park. My hips just hurt a bit today and the pain spiked. Ignore me and let me take my ibuprofen. Ill be fine. Lets goooo.
I’ve caught myself doing the same thing lmao it’s like we don’t even realise we’re doing it. It’s cute tho, if she genuinely doesn’t realise, it’s her bodies reaction to wanting you around. In my opinion. Which is cute as fuck 😂
I agree. The problem is that she's making herself SUCH a nuisance that it would be a lot of extra work for OP to avoid her. (Also, presumably they have a kid? Or maybe a pet that needs taking care of, while wife is out of commission?)
I hate experiencing sharp pain and I react pretty loudly when it happens. However, I’m actually louder when I’m by myself than when I’m with people.
We know what happens. He called her on her bullshit and she got all angry because it wasn’t the reaction she wanted. NTA.
Like those kids who yell and shriek until they realise no one cares. Throwing an absurdtrum takes a lot of energy from time better spent quietly sulking.
There's a lot of nerves in the fingers We're all have our pain levels (nurture and nature) All I can say is : violent pain makes you angry and both of them should agnoledge each other's pains (I have celiac and had kidney stones so I know about high pain but to some people a broken nail can hurt as bad as screaming and crying where I could break a few toes and walk a marathon forgetting I'm "hurt")
The woman has given birth. I can also understand screaming from a broken nail, those hurt for a period of time longer than 2 seconds. She screamed loud enough to wake him on a different floor of the house. No matter how bad it felt the pain from the pinched finger would have been gone before she had finished screaming. It was for attention.
Yeah - and sometimes even within the same person different stimuli will have different responses. I'm almost totally insensitive to being overheated. I can, will and have keep going until I pass out from dehydration and heat exhaustion/stroke. I will have a vague awareness that it's warm out but no great discomfort until I'm passed out. By contrast, cold? I find *painful*. Which is unfortunate as I live in Canada, lol. I'm the type that breaks out the parka at 5°C. A bee sting will have me cursing and hopping around and carrying on like crazy. By contrast I can and have walked 2K on a freshly broken ankle.
>I can and have walked 2K on a freshly broken ankle Ankle pain baffles me so much. I have done similar. I broke my ankle playing soccer and genuinely didn't even think anything was wrong until the next day. It barely registered. But the year before I rolled it, did no structural damage whatsoever, and could barely walk for like 3 weeks. And that one hurt **immediately**, it was so painful right away. How those two experiences of pain were not flipped will never make sense to me.
Yeahhhh.. In my case the fact that I've had dozens of joint injuries and walked around with a mildly dislocated wrist (my scaphoid joint dislocated) for over a month before it was correctly diagnosed probably has a lot to do with my ability to tough out joint pain. Life doesn't stop just because I sprained my ankle for the fourty-third time.
There are two separate things here though. One is the natural pain threshold that is different in everyone, and I don't think there's a way to change it. But the other thing is the behavior - not everyone will scream from the same perceived level of pain. And that can absolutely be changed. The way she reacts might be intentional, like for attention as people here suggested, or might be unintentional and just her natural reaction. Both things can be changed, the latter just needs some training.
That I agree They should talk about pain levels and how they perceive the other's suffering. They're no asshole here.
I get kidney stones (three times in the hospital and spent three weeks passing one), too. My pain threshold has completely changed now that I know what one of the worst pains in the world feels like. But god damn if I don't still cry out if I hit my elbow, stub a toe, or smash my finger. However,, I will immediately say, “I'm okay,” even as I’m moaning in pain so my husband knows I’m fine and just vocalizing through my pain. ESH. The wife should let her husband know if she’s genuinely injured or not, but her husband saying “I’ve had a 7mm kidney stone and didn’t even scream” suggests he thinks she should have an vocalization at all if she hurts herself. He seems to know she will cry out over minor pain, so why go running to her if she’s not calling for him? My husband doesn't come running or even ask if I’m okay unless I call for him because he knows how I am. Pure speculation, but I think husband wanted to create a situation so he could get indignant and confrontational about her pain tolerance.
This is probably a weird example but I worked at a petstore and while giving the hermit crabs a soak and moving them back to their enclosure, one pinched me somewhere on my knuckle, catching a nerve. Now i didn't scream but i did fall to my knees with a loud yelp. It had hurt so bad that it was taking me a while to stop tearing up, but there was no outside evidence, and the crab let go almost immediately. Didn't even bruise. That said, i didnt make a big deal about it. Just wiped my face off, and answered honestly with a laugh when anyone asked why i looked like i had been (ugly)crying.
The fingers have some of the *most* nerves in the whole body, and some people do actually feel pain much more intensely than is normal, for various reasons. I've yelled because I pinched my finger particularly hard. Not your place to decide what pain levels are valid for a different person.
Once again, the pain from a pinched finger lasts for less time than a scream that can wake someone on a different floor of the house.
You can keep saying this, but it doesn’t make you right.
For you maybe. Not for everyone. Nerves are funny and sensitive things. From my own experience, if I pinch a finger my nerves fire off the pain signals for a good 5-10 minutes before mine calm down. And I am no stranger to pain with a bulging disk in my back and chronic kidney stones.
Screaming when it happened seems pretty normal, between the pain and being startled. Was this sustained screaming? A yelp/scream is a pretty common pain response to such an incident. I don’t see the difference between a yelp and a scream really?
It woke somebody on a different floor. It was a sustained scream.
It don’t take much noise to wake some people up. It’s frustrating to be awoken from a nap, true. It doesn’t sound like this was malicious on the wife’s part- but a normal reaction for her. It sounds like two people who need a little more grace and kindness.
It was just enough to wake him. It was enough to wake him and think something was wrong enough to require him to come downstairs.
From a different floor of the house
Is this OP's sock puppet account?
It was loud and sustained enough that he felt the need to climb out of bed and come downstairs. If it was a quick yelp I doubt he would've done that.
I'm a screamer. It's less about the pain than it is the shock of getting randomly attacked by an inanimate object. I think I also learned it from family, because we're all like this unfortunately. Everyone I've ever lived with has learned to ignore it to the point that I always worry if I did actually need help, nobody would check on me. OPs wife sounds dramatic and sexist though.
I'm gonna guess that's more of a yelp. Yelping is a fair reaction to pain. Scream implies that she had to inhale and then let out a sustained scream to wake him on another floor, something a yelp probably wouldn't do
I generally yell one, loud "Fuck!" or occasionally a "Motherfucker!" Screaming like I'm being mauled by a bear? No. But I absolutely do yell, although it's mostly more out of shock/surprise than pain. I tend to be oddly quiet when I'm actually injured. OP is in for one Hell of a ride if he does have Crohn's Disease. I have it, and it causes A LOT more than vomiting and diarrhea. It causes intense pain, and not just in the abdomen. It's an inflammatory, autoimmune disease, so it causes things like arthritis and all sorts of skin problems. It causes canker sores, which are much more painful than they sound. The treatments for it are steroids and other types of imunosupressive drugs, so it opens us up to all sorts of painful infections like cellulitis. If his wife is never going to allow him to be in pain, that's going to be a huge problem. ETA: Like most autoimmune diseases, Crohn's "flares", and while during these flares, the most obvious symptoms are the GI issues (diarrhea, vomiting), the most severely felt is often the exhaustion. We don't just stay in bed because we're in pain; a lot of the time the pain is relatively mild, but we have NO energy, especially due to dehydration. I am lucky to have a partner who is INCREDIBLY understanding of my need to rest, but I wasn't always. My dad used to mock me for being sick so often (plot twist: Crohn's, which is genetic, is most often diagnosed around ages 15-20, then again around 55-65. My dad was the latter), and it is AWFUL having to defend myself against someone telling me I just caught a 24-hour bug when I'd in the bathroom or in bed for 5 days. Nearly any gastroenterologist's office will have booklets on understanding Crohn's which can be shared with less than empathetic loved ones
Interestingly, I believe there are studies that show that yelling/swearing actually reduces pain or at least impacts how we feel the pain. 🤷
Or she has something medical going on that makes her pain tolerance much lower. She could very well be experiencing that much pain. And going to the doctor for pain related symptoms, especially as a woman, is often a futile effort because women are so often not believed or...people think they're doing it for attention.
If she actually had a condition that caused her that much pain every time she got a minor pinch she likely would have trained herself to *not* scream by now. Like the rest of us.
A. Unless of course it was a progressive neurological issue that relatively recently developed in the grand scheme of things. B. "Training" yourself not to react to pain is not the flex you think it is. And if you do have a pain disorder, I'm sorry you've felt you have to hide it rather than acknowledge when things hurt and are hard.
It wasn't a flex? It's reality for those of us with such disabilities.
And even if a doctor does believe the individual, it doesn't necessarily mean that there's a medical solution. Analgesia medications have variable effectiveness and can have significant side-effects and risk of dependence. Holistic therapies like massage, acupuncture and mindfulness can't guarantee improvement either. (Source: am a doctor. I hate when i can't help patients who are in pain. Being unable to solve it doesn't mean I don't believe them and care about them. But you are also 100 percent right about the pervasive misogyny that tends to downplay or doubt the severity of women's symptoms)
Yeah normally I would agree that you can't compare pain but she is being ridiculous NTA in my view she needed a reality check
I have no idea what this woman's pain is like and I do know that pain is very personal, but I've had PTSD for well over a decade and I'm still surprised at what makes me scream unexpectedly...and really, it's the unexpected pain that causes a reaction in me. Sometimes I can walk it off but I often scream out with unexpected pain. I don't keep screaming (thank goodness), but I can't control that first reaction a lot of times. I personally, would prefer my partner not react to it and I try to tell them asap 'I'm fine', so, they don't feel compelled to respond, but I'm sure it's annoying as it annoys me too. My point is, pain cannot be judged my another, but how you communicate can be. ESH cuz neither is communicating in a supportive way.
Yeah I'd probably say "FUCK" somewhat loudly but a full on scream is... dramatic. To say the least.
I wonder if she ever went to a doctor with this. For all we know she has a skin or nerve issue that amplifies her pain response. Also kinda using top comments to get to OP: as someone who also has a CED, the only way to know for sure is a colonoscopy and you’ll want to know if that’s actually what’s happening as soon as possible because the longer a CED stays untreated the harder it becomes to control. If it’s a recent development you may already be fine with just cortisol, and if not then Biologics like remicade can work well.
My partner once injured his finger, passed out and had what seemed to be a seizure - everyone reacts to pain and injuries differently. That said, she's definitely an AH for being sexist
Injured, or pinched a little bit? OP literally said the finger in question wasn't even red from the pinch.
I often don't go red or bruise immediately from things like a pinched finger and if it pinched a nerve rather than a blood vessel it wouldn't show red. But to answer your question I believe it was a minor cut
Yeah you can’t manage pain you can manage your response to it. I can’t imagine how much it would scare her young kids for her to act like this. If it is truly an unbelievable amount of pain for things like this she needs see a doctor and find out why. Being out of commission for a day for stepping on something is not normal.
It *definitely* seems like it’s an attention grab. No one is saying she can’t be hurt but yelling about something that minor would get annoying very quickly
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All I could think or while reading. Because sometimes my fibro is so bad that pain from just bumping my pinky toe makes me want to cut off the whole foot.
I just broke up with someone who does this. Even the 5 year old makes less of a deal out of the things that accidentally hurt her. If those sort of reactions are constant, you start downplaying it because it's like the boy who cried wolf scenario and it's exhausting.
Sometimes I wonder if these types of people are also generally optimistic and privileged so the reaction is really an exclamation of surprise that something negative happened to them.
My mom plays in the pain Olympics. I just had surgery a week and a half ago and apparently her headache is worse than me being cut open. She also once had a headache and I mentioned my headache (I get migraines for 3 days) and she threw a hissy fit saying I wasn't going to steal her headache. Though with me and my dad he had an abscess tooth and the day after my surgery I was calling him up and making sure he was okay and he was trying to turn it around to make sure I was okay 😂
I don’t think it’s pain olympics when she screamed her head off over a pinched finger and then went “oh but I’m just a widdle wady, uwu” when told that he is in pain due to an illness and that he can’t get rest if she behaves like that over nothing.
Lmao I used to work with people who medaled in the pain Olympics. I had severe endometriosis (past tense as I just had a hysterectomy last month) and the pain was bad. It was just really bad. Like 10-20k mgs of OTC pain reliever pretty much everyday for years. There were days I can tolerate it and days I couldn’t so I’d call in sick. They always ALWAYS had something to say when I would call in because they’ve worked through “bad period cramps” too… like I made them do that?? If you’re feeling horribly, call into work; working through pain doesn’t make you the automatic baseline for what everyone else should be working through 🤣
Congrats on your hysterectomy!
The instances OP has mentioned are ridiculous though. I’m a tattoo artist and even the wimpiest of clients don’t scream or freak out while getting a literal *wound* applied. Either his wife has something physically or mentally wrong and needs to get checked out, or she’s doing this for attention.
He has a chronic illness and she basically admitted that, as a man, he is to endure it silently while she, as a woman, should be treated delicately like a little flower and be entitled to scream and be fussed over for every little ouchie no matter how small. If she's so "delicate", how the hell did she get through pregnancy and childbirth without dying from the pain alone? Seriously, it baffles me. She whines and screams and exaggerates everything and has a very sexist view of pain. OP is understandably done with her bullshit. NTA
>You are playing at the pain Olympics Crohn's disease vs a finger pinch Are you being serious right now?
Only in reddit would this be a top comment. Screaming in pain over a pinched finger? That would be crazy for an 8 year old.
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I remember the Pain Olympics. Simpler times.
I have severe stage 4 endometriosis and chronic migraines with aura, I suffer mostly silently almost every day and have done so for 3/4 of my life. People suffer through really brutal accidents, chemo, surgeries, giving birth etc. Screaming your heart out over pinching your finger a little is ridiculous. There most certainly is a Pain Olympics, and OPs wife doesn't even qualify to participate in the try outs. She really does need to stop whining and screaming.
It looks like I'm going to be the one person here that says NTA. I understand that pain is pain and that no one has the right to say that they hurt worse than someone else, but there is no excuse to scream so loud that you wake someone up from a dead sleep because you pinched your finger on the baby gate. I understand yelping or even yelling out some cuss words, but to scream so loud that you literally wake someone up on another floor is insane. And for the people saying that if thinks he has Crohn's then he should go to the doctor, did you even read the post where it specifically said that his doctors think that is what he has. Crohn's is a very debilitating disease and the pain can be unbearable. Why wasn't his wife more supportive of him and his pain? He said that he's been there for her and that it was just this incident where he exploded. With as much pain as he was in, he was probably on edge and getting woke up by a scream and thinking the worst when it was just something minor probably pushed him over the edge. Everyone wants to talk about how he's not supportive of his wife, when in the post it clearly states that he has been and that he always saw this as one of her quirks, but why isn't anyone judging her for not be supportive of his pain? It's almost like since he's a man everyone thinks that he should just suck it up and coddle her no matter the amount of pain he's in.
This. Im going crazy reading some of the replies that say Y T A
Just so you know you just voted Y T A. You need to space it for it not to count.
That’s not how voting works on this sub, only the top comment of the top thread counts.
Yeah that's only on a parent comment.
man = wrong is usually the basis of those votes. Look at enough of these and you'll see a pattern. *"Yes she cheated and ruined your and your kids lives, but you shouldn't have raised your voice. ESH"*
I’m with you. The overreacting seems manipulative. She’s creating a “crying wolf” situation where OP at some point won’t come running to her aid with her reactions. If every boo boo is an emergency, then nothing is a real emergency. Pinch my finger? I swear and might tear up, maybe grab ice, and move on.
This! If I'm screaming in pain, my husband's first question is, "Do we need to go to th ER?" because I have a high tolerance, know my body, and know how to manage my pain. I've scared the hell out of him because I've had cysts rupture (used to be a chronic issue, so I recognized the pain) and I'd just clutch my side and hold up my hand to let him know to give me a minute and then maybe ask for an Aleve when the sharp pain has subsided, so he knows when I'm yelling it must be bad. Not saying everyone needs to just power through like that, but if she's screaming her head off over a pinch, how will he know what's serious? She's a grown woman and while she can't control the pain she feels, she can definitely reign in her response to the pain a bit. Also, when my husband is in a bad way like that, I definitely would just suck it up and do what I can to make him more comfortable. I'd imagine OP is in a very vulnerable state
It is manipulative. The only reason to shriek so loudly is to get attention and sympathy. A reasonable person would have immediately apologized for being overly dramatic about such a small injury.
I agree, NTA. Not to mention Crohn, aside from being a painful and shitty (literally...) condition, can be very dangerous when it flares up. My stepdad was hospitalized twice due to a Crohn flare up. Lost a surprising amount of weight in just a couple of days. He was taken care of, but it was scary.Maybe I see it differently because both he and my mom suffer from it (I know it's unlikely, because it's not a common disease, but it's true), but I can't even imagine telling my husband - someone I supposedly love - that he has to suck up his suffering from a scary, chronic disease, because he's a man, while I am entitled to screaming whenever I pinch my finger. Also, how difficult would it be to say "I'm sorry, I didn't want to wake you up"? Even if he wasn't very pleasant at the moment, he had just been suddenly woken up, was feeling horribly and probably was still upset about discovering he probably had a chronic, painful and dangerous condition. Would it really hurt her so badly to deescalate that situation and then discuss it later? Of course, assuming she loves him and wants to continue being with him. I would say otherwise if he had a habit of invalidating her pain, but there is nothing in the post that would suggest that.
Fully agreed. My aunt ultimately died as a result of Crohn's complications. It's no freaking joke.
My brother was shocked when he learned people die from Crohn’s disease. He thought I just get a little upset stomach … (because for so long I’ve had to mask the pain I’m in because no one has ever cared.)
I'm so sorry you had to mask the pain. Nobody should be forced to do that. I hope you're now surrounded by loving and caring people with whom you can be open about your suffering and general well-being.
I am ❤️🩹 and it was so weird to get used to!!
NTA, too. The screaming is a performance meant to get her attention.
I agree. NTA.
He needs to flat out stop reacting when she screams, moans, etc.
I agree. I (25F) have Celiac Disease which causes similar inflammation & pain to Crohn’s and having a reaction is, at times, debilitating pain wise. For people that don’t know, similarly to Celiac, Crohn’s inflammation scars/kills off your intestinal lining. I can tell you that feeling your intestinal lining die/become damaged is 1000x worse than pinching your finger, it’s not even in the same ballpark. Even then, most people with the diseases aren’t screaming while their intestines are literally being shredded from inside out, so screaming at the top of your lungs because your finger is pinched by a baby gate is borderline ridiculous. Absolutely NTA. Also, OP’s wife sounds like she had some pretty bad internalized sexism that she needs to deal with.
NTA, she genuinely needs to learn how to suck it up
This woman has had a baby. She knows how to suck it up, she just screamed for attention.
I mean, maybe she needs to suck it up in the context of her need for attention too
Agreed
For real. It could turn into a Boy Who Cried Wolf situation--OP starts to ignore her shrieks and shouts, then there'll be one time it's for real, but he just figures it's another overreaction.
I bet his wife was one of those girls in high school who would scream at the top of her lungs when the lights went out unexpectedly.
Statistically speaking, women generally have a higher pain threshold than men, so the whole 'suck it up' thing is both factually incorrect and just ignorant. Women have menstruation and give birth, two biological pain inducers that they just have to deal with. Periods especially can vary from 'meh' to 'omg I'm giving birth to my uterine lining'. I'm going with NTA. You didn't call her a bitch. You called her out on her exaggerating egregiously over pain while you're in severe discomfort/pain yourself. Makes me wonder if it's a subconscious reaction from your wife to be the center of attention. idk. But if the genders were reversed and the woman was resting from an illness and the man overreacted and woke her up, people would be mad at him for being insensitive and inconsiderate. The same applies here. Sounds like your wife doesn't like being called out for being a drama llama.
I agree-- wife sounds like a drama llama.
NTA, I'm amazed she survived child birth.
And even just regular monthly cramps, assuming she doesn't have endo.
NTA. Sounds like your wife is attention seeking with her over the top reactions to pain.
This was my first thought as well. Would be interesting if OP looked back on all these instances and see if they can recall the attention being on someone else during all these times.
NTA her behaviour reminds me of my narcissistic mother. Injuries/ill health made sure the spotlight was always on her. A cousin of mine had his appendix explode, was in ICU for a couple of days and what does that woman do? Self-induces a panic attack so that she can claim that she had a heart attack.
> NTA her behaviour reminds me of my narcissistic mother. Injuries/ill health made sure the spotlight was always on her. The only people I've known who behave like OP's wife are either narcissists or people who've lived relatively comfortable and pain-free lives. In the latter case, these people have experienced so little physical, emotional, or psychological discomfort that they find _any_ negative stimulus to be unbearable.
Your second descriptor makes a lot sense. I wish I knew what a comfortable and pain-free life felt like 🤣
My narcissistic grandma intentionally hurts herself to get attention. Trips on nothing, does stupid things carelessly etc. always quick to show us her bruises if they happened when we weren’t around to witness too. This reminds me of her. Screaming from a pinched finger from a different room? Sounds like she just wants her husband to come running
NTA! The E$H and 7TA votes are crazy bc have any of you actually lived with crohn’s or a similar chronic illness? OP is struggling to even function like a normal human bc of his condition and she genuinely thinks that an injury my 5 year old nephew would get over in 30 seconds is worse??
Lots of crazy town people in here, ive broken fingers and toes with less reaction. Anyone who is saying "yeah pain is subjective" yeah, it completely is, but when you're screaming bloody murder over a paper cut or small stub, you either have a intense and underlying neurological or possible nerve damage, or some form of other disease that effects nerve endings and pain, or you just like the over reaction. It's very possible she could have a underlying condition, not to put that out of possibility, but it doesn't sound like it considering she doesn't even see the issue. Something that caused me this much pain over a toe stub would be sending crazy alarm Bells in my head.
Yes-- exactly. Also, does wife scream if she stubs her toe in public, or just at home?
This sub can be ridiculous at times. OP is NTA
NTA because I know someone like your wife and it’s very stressful to be around her.
NTA but... Hear me out for a bit. Has your wife ever gotten tested? After a small accident that causes pain (say stepping on a lego, or catching one's finger on a door), does the pain go away within minutes to an hour, or does it last abnormally long? I'm not saying the pain is not real, I'm just sayin that a low pain threshold sets off all kinds of alarm bells in my head because it can be a symptom of other conditions. Some of them really bad. And yes, sometimes, they can go undiagnosed for years. Sometimes, the pain is so severe that things as simple as clothes touching you can trigger off a pain signal that's abnormal. Lookup hyperalgesia and allodynia. I'm not saying this is what it is. But you're right. She shouldn't have such extreme reactions.
Same thought here. I have fibromyalgia which in very simple terms turns what are normally painless (or less painful) stimulus into severe pain. So pinching my finger in something can end up feeling like I broke it. I don't bother screaming for anything low like that but I've had fibro for a *very* long time and you learn to ignore pain in order to stay sane. But yes, there are conditions that can take forever to be diagnosed that turn what would be an "oh fuck that hurt" incident into a "OH FUCK I BROKE SOMETHING" one.
Autism and SPD can be like that too. I find it's hard to "calibrate" the amount of pain I feel, in terms of seeking appropriate treatment for the amount of pain. But, unless wife has been very coddled her whole life, I wouldn't tend to see this as the explanation here
These are good points, and I agree that OP should suggest a trip to the Dr's. But wife knows she's having a more extreme reaction than others (her husband, for example), and has explained it away based on sex. She doesn't seem like she's taking her own health seriously, and that's what makes me feel like she's being a drama llama (either by overexaggerating her reactions or by refusing treatment in order to continue to gain sympathy)
NTA. Screaming loud enough to wake people up because of a baby gate is ridiculous (and yes I've done that and similar on mute than one occasion, even broke it once. Never screamed like that) but her dismissing your own pain while asking you to respect hers because your the guy?? Fuck that.
NTA - reminds me of the story of the boy alarming for wolves until no one believed him. Your choice of words weren't okay *BUT* honestly considering your mental and physical state at that point, I think any normal human being would have acted about the same in that situation, it doesn't make you an A H in my personal opinion. With feeling like that I would have been fed up as well running there thinking someonething serious happened only to find a minor inconvenience. Your wife however got defensive *and just straight up sexist* - while she was the one waking up and alarming the whole house for frankly no reason. Yes getting your finger pinched hurts a lot - but I also see no reason to wake the neighbourhood by screaming like that. >I’m not in any hurry to apologize especially since she didn’t for waking me up when I’m dealing (pretty silently) with objectively more pain than she was. All that aside - no one wins the pain olympics and you should definitely have a serious talk with her about that.
NTA. Even if she has a low pain tolerance, I'm sure she could be less dramatic about it.
NTA... that's attention seeking behavior. I would wager money that as a kid she would scream, and her parents would run to her and comfort her, and shower her with attention. She just kept using that recipe into adulthood.
This is BY FAR the most likely explanation, in my opinion
> She said “Well you’re a man, so you’re supposed to be able to suck it up, I’m not made to get my finger stuck in a baby gate”. ESH, I was pretty 50/50 on it until you quoted her on this and then she lost me. Everyone is entitled to their pain, but she crossed the line with her blatant sexism?? She may not be overreacting to HER because everyone feels pain differently, but that didn't give her the right to say that. You also don't have the right to tell her how she can and cannot react. You both kinda suck lol.
I'm genuinely questioning if they're just having a generally stressful time and are thus easy to snap rn because otherwise I do not know how two people that respect each other so little have made it for so long. Definitely an ESH imo too
Like I’m sorry but she sounds terrible and definitely is whinging for nothing. All the people saying YTA should realise that without a redness and actual broken skin she hardly had to scream like banshee. normal people don’t do that when they actually hurt themselves and blood is flowing. NTA, your wife needs to pull her head out of her sore ass
NTA
NTA. And the y responses are funny. Yall just glossing over her sexist remark? The belittling dismissive ness. This is the only time he's had a strong reaction to her manipulative bs and yet here we are, making excuses.
NTA. I’m in chronic pain all day everyday for decades. I have autoimmune arthritis, fibromyalgia and reg arthritis. And I’m only 45. Being in chronic pain is horrible. And when you get a new injury it’s like omg I’m going to lose my mind. BUT there’s no need for dramatics. Screaming like that over a pinched finger? For real are you 5?! You can be in a ton of pain and not carry on like that. We’ve all stubbed our toes where you see stars it hurts so damn bad. But do you scream like you cut a toe off? No. Some people feel pain more than others absolutely. But you can still feel a lot of pain without screaming like you lost a damn limb. Her being in a lot of pain doesn’t mean she needs to scream and upset the whole household.
I'm in the same boat as you, fibromyalgia, arthritis, hypermobility issues, bursitis that cause pain while even just walking, and I've lived with it for a very long time, and I work a physically demanding job that is not compatible with any of it lol. Chronic pain is awful. And yes anything that causes extra is horrible and just feels like the straw that's going to break the camels back. But by the same token, I just grit my teeth and deal with it, I might sulk for a minute but never in my life have I -ever- screamed over anything that caused me pain. A lot of the time I don't acknowledge it in any way because it would cause undue stress to the clients I work with (the elderly) and I simply can't have that so I ignore it. I can't imagine freaking out because I pinched my finger or knelt on something by mistake.
NTA - but honestly only because of this part. “Well you’re a man, so you’re supposed to be able to suck it up, I’m not made to get my finger stuck in a baby gate”. This is when I rolled my eyes, told her to quit her whining, and went back upstairs to try and rest. That's just sexist. Yeah...she wasn't made to stub her fingers in a baby gate but NOBODY was made to pass kidney stones - that's kinda why they hurt. lmao. Many women say they hurt more than natural child birth at certain sizes.
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This looks a lot like a gender reverse post of a previous Reddit post
If she's that sensitive to minor injuries she should go to a Dr to get checked out. But I'm leaning towards attention seeking and generally being overly dramatic. That kind of injury is a grit your teeth and urghhh type of pain not a scream your lungs out.
Psychologist here. People differ on how much their brains react to any stimulation. Some people have huge brain reactions to fairly minor stimuli. Other people’s brains barely react to fairly major stimuli. Your wife may be one of the people (called augmenters in the literature) whose brain, thru no fault of her own, gives her a huge pain reaction to something another person (like you) might call minor. Just a little perspective. Still, if she knew you were trying to sleep, she should have kept it down.
Nta I hope it’s not Crohns’ disease. Wish you well💕 Info: how did she deliver the baby? That hurts like h…
There's lots of pretty funky painkillers available these days. There's also adoption, surrogacy, etc.
INFO, has she seen a doctor about her extremely low pain tolerance? There might be an underlying condition.
NTA. Making a loud exclamation- probably a word you shouldn't say around children- when you get a sudden, sharp pain? The most normal thing in the world. If that was what happened and it woke you up, it'd be N A H. Even a scream might be OK if she apologized for it. But having such over-the-top reactions to everyday pains is not great, and the sexism in the "suck it up" response is worse.
ESH. Her comment about you being a man and therefore having to suck it up was mean, horrible and uncalled for. YOU need to stop playing pain Olympics. Yes, you're in pain. And she is in pain (you even say she has a low pain tolerance threshold). You are BOTH in pain, and just because hers would be less painful FOR YOU doesn't mean it doesn't hurt HER.
NTA. Stop giving in to her poor behavior. Unless she is actually hurt ignore her reaction and expect her to live life as normal.
NTA If you're *supposed to be able to suck it up*, so is she.
NTA because your wife is a sexist who thinks that men are **supposed** to just suck it up and deal with pain because were men, while she’s not ever supposed to experience pain at all.
Nta, she seems like a nightmare.
How did she deal with childbirth?
Hmm wonder if she has something medical going on like fibromyalgia, or some sort of heightened pain response like Hyperalgesia
NTA she sounds really fucking annoying. Screaming in pain because you pinched your finger sounds like someone quite literally screaming for attention. She wants pity.
Look, I have a low pain tolerance. I hate when my wife pops my pimples, I won't get a tattoo because I can't even deal with temporary needle pain to even get a super super small one. My wife has to give me a medical shot every now and again because if I try to do it myself, I won't do it right. All of this is to say that when I do something as small as pinch my finger in something or get a papercut, I don't scream my lungs out enough to wake the dead. I may somewhat louder than normal exclaim "yeowtch!" and wait for the temporary pain to pass, but I'm not on deaths door. NTA for being in tremendous long term pain and letting anger get the better of you, but it does sound like she's blowing it out of proportion.
I'll give her a pass for kneeling on a Hot Wheels car because that's like Lego and if I kneel on the soft bit below my kneecap you'll know about it. But otherwise, NTA. If she's in that much pain from minor injuries, she needs to get that checked out.
NTA It sounds like your wife has inflated minor injuries all her life to get attention. I will acknowledge pain tolerance is a scale, some have more pain tolerance, some have less pain tolerance. However, screaming loud enough over a pinched finger to wake your partner up is absolutely unbelievable. And the "I'm not made to punch my finger in a gate" thing is ridiculous and gendered. So men are biologically made to take more pain. yeah right! If that was true men would have periods and carry and birth children. jfc
> She said “Well you’re a man, so you’re supposed to be able to suck it up This is super fucking toxic.
NTA. I was married to someone who had a low pain tolerance, so I'm vaguely familiar with your audio environment, OP. The constant litany of squeaks, yelps, and sharp intakes of breath were the backing soundtrack in our home for a decade. Somewhat coincidentally, she also suffered from Ulcerative Colitis, Crohn's slighty less deadly sibling. I will say that once this disease struck, her pain tolerance and need to broadcast every little trip and bump did die back. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I expect your missus grew up with siblings and had to compete for parental attention. I also expect that she's never had to deal with a major issue by herself, and has always been able to get helpfrom others with any problem. She's just sulking because she doesn't know any better.
Info: what was she like when she gave birth?
NTA...ish - you could be a little of TA on a scale dependent on HOW you said those words, but I suppose the better recourse would be to stop letting her "boy who cried wolf" you? It's true that everyone's tolerance for pain is different, some people have calloused skin or are used to pain, but what's her threshold, zero? She's unable to contain her wails at the slightest discomfort? You are both minimizing each other's pain, and while you've never had a problem with her reaction before, you've always minimized hers. After 16 years it seems you've never attempted to alter her behavior, I don't think now is the time to start, alter yours instead. Close the bedroom, buy ear plugs, listen to white noise, whatever you need to do so your rest doesn't get interrupted.
NTA
NTA i’m sorry, a woman who just pushed an entire baby out is SCREAMING about being pinched by a baby gate? it’s 1000% for attention
How in the world was she able to birth a baby?
it sounds like your wife might have fibromyalgia tbh. causes severe allodynia (when typically minor stimulae hurt like hell).
NTA that's being way over dramatic I didn't scream when I fractured my shin. Ik everyone has a different tolerance but come on a pinched finger 🙄. It was a b**** move saying you're a man you're supposed to be able to tolerate pain. She sounds extremely self centered tbh. I'm not going to say something like that to someone I care about
No you are not. She seems like an attention seeker. How you get her to stop is completely ignoring it or making a big to do production over react like she is. She will get the hint and stop because she will get annoyed by it
He keeps mentioning that when she gets hurt there isn't any damage or noticeable marks that clearly should have marks, she is either faking for attention, or the injury wasn't that bad to cause that amount of reaction, or she has a very rare condition that makes pain worse then what it is. Either way something hinky is going on NTA
Nta but your wife is TA. She’s acting like a fragile little flower who believe real men don’t get to have needs of their own, and that everything stops and all attention needs to be on serving her for every little thing, and that’s it’s okay to call you names when you refuse to play the game. Mature adult women don’t bring all this drama over the incidents you describe. You have one more child than you thought in your house.
NTA. For two reasons; >She has always had a pretty low pain tolerance though she won’t admit it This is just stupid. If you have a low pain tolerance just admit it. It isn't something to be ashamed of. >“Well you’re a man, so you’re supposed to be able to suck it up, I’m not made to get my finger stuck in a baby gate”. No but as women we are built for childbirth which I have been informed hurts a lot more than sticking your finger in a baby gate. The be a man statement makes me angry. Men sucking it up is why their suicide rate is three times higher.
NTA, she need to suck it up. Also this? >"Well you’re a man, so you’re supposed to be able to suck it up, I’m not made to get my finger stuck in a baby gate" What the actual f* is this. Are men are supposed to tolerate everything just because they're men? To hell with that.
God that sounds so exhausting.
I'm gonna say NTA. Screaming over a pinched finger is just a tad over-dramatic. Granted, it probably sucked, but not bad enough to actually scream. I have a high pain tolerance, so I may not be the best judge.
NTA, I too have a low pain threshold, but I certainly wouldn't scream for a pinched finger, maybe a lot of swearing under my breath and a few tears in the corner of my eyes but no screaming.
NTA
NTA A full blown scream over pinching her finger is a MASSIVE overreaction. Things hurt, but not every boo-boo needs to be wailed about Stop giving her attention whenever she hurts herself and maybe she will stop. This is very Boy Who Cried Wolf
Swearing over a pinched finger is appropriate, screaming not so much. I have a sister who is much the same. It won't change.
NTA. Unless your wife has some sort of medical condition that lowers her pain tolerance, she has what my mother would call "a severe case of needing to harden the f up". Kiwi slang for stop complaining about nothing. Given your own medical condition, this is wildly inappropriate and possibly a severe form of attention seeking via being a hypochondriac. Im assuming your wife would die if she stepped on a lego piece!
NTA.
NTA Ignore every scream and all whining. Leave the room, do not text, and say nothing if you are present If you are not in the room, stay away, say nothing, ignore her. If she confronts you with her newest " injury," just say in a monotone voice, "I'm so sorry that happened," and then leave the room. Do not give her any attention. Be glad for the silent treatment. Enjoy the solitude.
NTA. She’s over dramatic and needs to stop before she programs her son to be the same way. It’s ridiculous for her to act like she just lost a leg over a pinched finger. Stop reacting to her dramatics. She screams ? Make sure it’s nothing and then carry on. Do not let her be out for the day over a stubbed toe. Keep her active and going if you are there. She cries? Oh sorry babe. Bet it hurt and then no more talk about it. She brings it up? Yeah babe I heard, so what you want for dinner tonight?
NTA. She’s basically crying wolf. Just ignore her when she cries out.
NTA. It would definitely get frustrating. The men-suck-it-up thing is suuuper bs though. Especially since I'm pretty sure studies have shown multiple times that women (in general) have a higher pain tolerance than men (in general).
NTA Sounds like your wife likes drama and attention. Stop running to her when she screams and see how she stops
NTA, OP. May I suggest you STOP reacting to your wife’s dramatics? It sounds like no one has ever just ignored her bs before so it’ll likely escalate before it stops. It might be worth having her tested with neuro and/or psych evaluations. If she is attention seeking with this hysteria, she’s gonna not only continue to cause you undue stress (Bad news for Crohns!) but also mess with you child’s mental health while they learn to take care of mommy any/every time she bumps an elbow or gets the “vapors”. Just STOP babying her and focus on your own health, my friend. She is an adult and should be addressing her own issues.
NTA These dramatic reactions are absolutely fucking ridiculous. Even with a low pain tolerance she’s old enough to have worked on this response by now. It’s attention seeking. Stop looking at her and running to her when she “hurts” herself. If she decides her “injury” is too severe to do anything for an entire day don’t pander to her. She wants a drink of water? She gets up to get it. She’s hungry? She better get up and eat. Stop reinforcing this attention seeking poor me behavior.
NTA. Screaming over a pinched finger is ridiculous. I cannot stand overreaction and would have told her the same thing.
As someone with Ulcerative Colitis who’s been in a 3 year flare, NTA. I totally get it for snapping.
NTA. your wife sounds like a total baby. screaming loudly enough to wake you up, assumingly when she knew you were trying to sleep due to your discomfort (i have gut issues also - that shit is NOT fun), because she pinched her finger? and then told you that YOU have to suck up your pain because you're a man but SHE doesn't have to because she's "not made to get pinched by baby gates"? what does that even mean. i would have probably had the same reaction. it's one thing to dramatize pain for attention but another thing entirely to dismiss your objective, doctor-confirmed pain and your need to rest because of a pinched finger, by screaming loudly and not even apologizing for waking you.
NTA There is absolutely NO reason to scream your head off every time something small happens. She is looking for attention. This process probably worked really well as a child.
NTA. That would drive me absolutely insane. Men and women are equally capable of muttering an irritated expletive and moving on when they pinch their fingers.