Depending on the people, all sorts of subtle power dynamics can start to emerge in a new marriage and manifest in strange ways. These dynamics can become especially ugly and problematic if one person in the relationship is a sociopathic control freak. An older r/AmItheAsshole thread recently went viral on Twitter because of its sheer weirdness. The original post by u/aitalightswater comes across as desperate as she explains her husband's bizarre behavior. According to OP, her husband quit his job soon after they got married and asserted that she would be abusing him unless she put him in control of her income. On top of that, he would leave all the lights and water faucets on all day while she was at work, which became very expensive. Whenever she confronted him about this, he would say "but you have hands and you choose not to work as a mechanic, so I also can choose not to turn it off." Umm…what? What does that even mean? It's baffling that OP would even post this to r/AmItheAsshole, when clearly her husband was the guilty party in this scenario. Pretty much everyone who commented on the thread urged OP to run far, far away from this guy.
Not all Reddit threads make it to Twitter, but when they do, they often go more viral there than on their original forum. Here's what Twitter had to say about u/aitalightswater's insane marital problem.
We search for the original thread from r/AmItheAsshole and discovered that it was actually posted about one year ago. Here's what redditors were saying in the comment section of the thread at the time. Many encouraged OP to leave her husband immediately and even suggested that he was displaying abusive behavior.
“He does actually control things financially. I am the only one who works because the day we were legally married he changed, quit his job and does not respect our living space at all. He insists I give him all the money we have left after paying for the essentials, saying that I am abusive if I don't, and I don't even have credit on my phone or buy things I need because he insists on having all the money. I have thoughts of leaving but would feel guilty for breaking my vows but this wasn't who he represented himself as.” said OP.
About a week after sharing her dilemma with r/AmItheAsshole, OP made another post to r/relationship_advice, where she opens up about dealing with feelings of loneliness after finally leaving her husband. You can find that thread here.