Along with trauma, everyone has their own way of coping, and no one should tell you that there’s a right or wrong way to cope. A woman on Reddit shared her experience with coping with her childhood trauma and her husband’s negative reaction. While shopping with her daughter and husband, the woman spotted a toy doll that looked a lot like one she had in her childhood, but when she wanted to purchase it, her husband had something to say.
Her husband yelled at her and told her to “grow up” for wanting a doll that looked like the same one she had as a child.
This troubled her so much that she decided that she had to get it off her chest by visiting the subreddit, “r/TrueOffMyChest” in order to feel better about the whole ordeal. RELATED: ‘I Don’t Love My Wife’ — Man Seeks Advice After Realizing He Has Been In A Loveless Marriage For 8 Years This subreddit is a place for people to talk about their problems openly, and she likely had no idea that the post would blow up in the way that it did, but the story goes like this. “We were out grocery shopping today, and our daughter of course wanted a toy,” she wrote. “So as she’s looking around I noticed a doll that looked strikingly similar to one that I had as a kid.” She said that she was “drawn to it,” and decided to grab it and bring it to where her husband was standing with the cart, and this is where things get ugly. “I told him that this looked like a childhood doll of mine that my mother had burned and told him I planned to purchase it,” she wrote. “I didn’t think this would be an issue but he kinda just glared me down.”
“He asked why, and that I was almost 30 and didn’t need such stupid kid crap,” she continued.
“I explained in my traumatic upbringing I didn’t have many toys, and the one doll I did have meant everything to me. It looked just like her and that I think it would really help me feel a little more whole again.” RELATED: Mom Wonders If She Overreacted When A Nurse Said Her Adopted Daughter ‘Wasn’t Her Real Child’ Let’s say we cast him some benefit of the doubt before. Maybe he didn’t understand where she was coming from or why she wanted the doll? After this explanation, surely, he would see that she really wanted this doll as a way to cope with her horrible past and support her in her quest — guess again. “He rolled his eyes, grabbed the doll and tossed it back on the shelf,” she wrote. “He said ‘Alyssa is the only kid here. If I had wanted to marry a kid I’d be in jail. Grow up.’ I tried to say something else but he just yelled ‘Drop it!’ and that was that.” She mentions that he never reacts in that manner or behaves like that at all, so she chalks it up to him being in a bad mood, but the incident sits with her and unearths those past memories. RELATED: Pregnant Woman Wonders If She Is Wrong For Sitting On Man’s Hand After He Refused To Move It From Seat “I keep reliving those memories with my doll, up until my mother destroyed it,” she concludes. “That doll was there for me when my stepdad would hurt me and all the yelling and fights happened. I feel so stupid but I really just wanted to hold her again, even if it’s not the original.” The comments were filled with support and some advice from people saying that the behavior her husband showed was not normal behavior befitting of the man you’re married to. In an update to the post, she reveals that her husband had received stressful news about his mother, didn’t want to stress her even further, and lashed out at her because of what he was dealing with. “He apologized and said he shouldn’t have taken his emotions out on me. I have the doll now and all is well,” she wrote. Don’t let anyone get in the way of how you cope with trauma unless the coping mechanism is something harmful like drugs or alcohol. RELATED: Sisters Receive Backlash For Performing Viral TikTok Trend In Front Of Their Mom’s Open Casket Isaac Serna-Diez is a writer who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics. Follow him on Twitter here.
