A woman is rethinking her actions after discovering that her husband named their daughter after a character from one of his books.
In a post on Reddit’s AITAH [Am I the A——] forum, the 37-year-old explained that she and her 25-year-old husband have two children, including a five-year-old daughter. She works as a professor, while her husband stays home with the kids and writes in his free time.
“He doesn’t do the best, but he takes care of the kids, so it’s fine for him to have a hobby,” she wrote. The woman said she only recently learned that her husband chose their daughter’s name from a character in one of his unfinished manuscripts.
“It’s a unique and beautiful name, and I loved it, but he never told me where it came from,” she said.
She explained that the truth came out when her husband was showing her some of his old writing. While reading, she noticed their daughter’s name in the story.
At first, she thought her husband had written their daughter into one of his “bad [young adult] stories.” But when she asked, he admitted that the name actually came from the manuscript.
“Now I was incredibly angry that he hadn’t told me about this, and he tried to act like he was in the right by saying I didn’t ask,” she wrote. “You should tell people when you name their daughter after a book character.”
Her husband argued that it “wasn’t a big deal” since he never finished the book. But she pointed out that he never finishes any of them.
The argument escalated, and when their son started crying, her husband went to care for him. While he was gone, she began shredding as many of his papers as she could find.
“I was a little worked up at the time,” she admitted.
Her husband was furious when he returned, since most of his writing is done on a typewriter or by hand. She defended herself by saying he had digital copies and never actually did anything with the books anyway.
After the fight, her husband left with their children to stay at his parents’ house. Soon after, she heard from her in-laws, who called her “a horrible mom.”
When she asked Reddit if she was wrong, many commenters criticized her reaction. One person told her, “You are out of control,” and urged her to get therapy for the sake of her children. Another commenter said she acted with “the emotional bandwidth of a teenager.”
A third suggested that her anger might come from being the family’s only wage earner, but added that destroying her husband’s work was not acceptable.
“That’s abuse,” the person wrote. “What you’re going to need to do here is admit that you are not OK with the current financial arrangement, figure out what you need to be OK, and ask for it — even if it means your relationship might end.”
