Condescending husband refuses to watch anything but Hallmark movies with his wife because she 'doesn't understand' complex movies: 'My wife proceeded to embarrass herself'

Author image for JR Atkinson
JR Atkinson • Writer and Editor
Oct 28, 2024 6:00 PM EDT

Hallmark movies are awesome. They're hilariously, reliably formulaic. They have stilted acting and even more stilted dialogue. They have names like "The Other Christmas Wife" or "Winter Is For Loving, and Christmas." They're my favorite thing to watch when I'm in a hotel room. Nothing hits like a terrible movie and a room service BLT. My mom and I play a game we invented whenever we watch Hallmark movies together: we pause it 15 minutes in and each take a turn saying what we think is going to happen in the rest of the movie. Whoever gets it closest wins. It's remarkable how close we both get every time. 

That said, if I could only watch Hallmark movies for the rest of my life, I'd be pretty upset. But that's what one husband wanted to banish his wife to, after deciding that her constant questions about other, more complex movies were too much to bear. Read on for the story.

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    Cheezburger Image 10421474048
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    This image is for illustration only, and the subjects are models; the image does not depict the actual subjects of the story

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    AITA because I will not watch anything more complicated than a Hallmark movie with my wife.
    via u/Turbulent_Welder_450
  • 03
    I love my wife. She is intelligent, and sweet. Also she is beautiful inside and out. She teaches high school English and Social Studies. She loves novels and usually has several on the go.
    via u/Turbulent_Welder_450
  • 04
    However she cannot follow the plot of a movie to save her life. Unless it is about a big city lawyer visiting her home town to shut down the local factory but instead reconnecting with her high school boyfriend who is also the local baker and mayor.
    via u/Turbulent_Welder_450
  • 05
    I've known this about her for years and I have accepted it. I just like vegging with her so I am happy to see white people rediscovering the magic of Christmas. Or whatever.
    via u/Turbulent_Welder_450
  • 06
    When we were dating we watched The Matrix. The questions she asked had me wondering about her. Ditto for anything complex. Even The Usual Suspects where they lay everything out for you she didn't get the ending. We had her sister and brother-in-law over for a couples night on Friday. We made supper and the plan was to watch a movie. Hee sister wanted to watch Shutter Island. I will not spoil it but the movie has many twists. The ending is awesome.
    via u/Turbulent_Welder_450
  • 07
    I tried my best to suggest anything else. The new Laura Dern movie where she bangs the kid from Hunger Games. They all ganged up on me and said we were watching Shutter Island. My wife proceeded to embarrass herself by not understanding the ending and asking questions that were not great.
    via u/Turbulent_Welder_450
  • 08
    Her sister and her husband were looking at my wife like she was Simple Jack. I tried my best to cover for her or telling her I would explain it later. She got mad at me for not just answering her questions. After they left she started in in me. She said that she noticed that we always watched a certain kind of movie and that she thought I enjoyed them. I said I did because we got to spend time together and that mad me happy.
    via u/Turbulent_Welder_450
  • 09
    She said that she was not an idiot and that she just didn't concentrate on movies. She recited the plots of several novels to prove her point. I said that I had never commented on her intelligence and that ahe was smarter than me. She says that I'm aj for not watching movies I enjoy with her. So I agreed and we watched Memento today. I think her head almost exploded from bot asking questions. I saw her on Wikipedia reading the plot. AITA for intentionally not watching complicated movies with my
    via u/Turbulent_Welder_450
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    aldergirl 9h ago. NAH. I can understand why you picked movies you could both enjoy, and I can see why she might be a bit miffed at the miscommunication. Having said that, maybe she's already found the solution to the problem. You both watch the complex movie together, and then she reads the plot summary so she can process the information in a way that makes sense to her. Then she doesn't have to ask questions, and you can both enjoy movies together.
    via u/aldergirl
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    Depending on how her brain works, she might even enjoy reading the plot summary first, and then watching it with you. She might be able to enjoy the movie even more. It'd be like when you watch a movie about a book you read, but this time everything is accurate because the "book" is the plot summary.
    via u/aldergirl
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    DissconnectNot Ready 9h ago • Have you tried turning on the captions? She might process information by reading so that could help her. Also if you always watch with them on, maybe that's what's distracting her. I know I miss some scenes because I'm busy reading, I have to rewind it a bit.
    via u/DissconnectNotReady
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    nblackhand · 9h ago · • INFO: Did she "embarrass herself" or were you embarrassed on her behalf? By which I mean, was she upset by not understanding the movie, or just by the way you were reacting? How sure are you that the negative vibe you got from her sister was about her asking dumb questions and not her sister being concerned about you trying to
    via u/nblackhand
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    shut her down? Like, there's no way she and her sister haven't watched movies together before, right, her habit of wanting movie plots explained while watching them cannot possibly have been news. It's fine and normal to not prefer to try to answer questions while you're trying to enjoy a movie, but imo you should try to separate the issue of what you need in order to enjoy a movie from the question
    via u/nblackhand
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    of whether simpler movies are also to her benefit. If she enjoys watching complicated movies so long as she has someone to talk through them with, that's a different problem from her not wanting to watch them because it's stressful to try to follow but feeling obliged for other people's enjoyment.
    via u/nblackhand
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    Organic_Draft_4578 · 9h ago • Not sure how to vote, but leaning towards YTA. While it does sound annoying for you, the way you talk about your wife is kinda condescending. It's like you think that because she has trouble following one specific type of movie (cerebral + plot twisty) that she can only handle crappy chick
    via u/Organic_Draft_4578
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    flicks (AND you're embarrassed for her by that). You also basically talked down to her in front of her sister and BIL. Are you even so sure they really thought she was so stupid? Or that they were that bothered by her not getting the twist? What I really don't get is this: why is the only alternative to movies with plot twists designed to mess with your head Hallmark movies?
    via u/Organic_Draft_4578
  • 18
    Like, there are plenty of other genres out there. Pick something better than Hallmark but with not so many plot twists. It can't be that hard. (Or, as someone else suggested, if you HAVE to pick something with a big reveal at the end, let her read the plot summary on IMDB either before or after the movie so she can process it better.)
    via u/Organic_Draft_4578
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    No_Beautiful5200 • 8h ago YTA. There are so many good movies out there. But all of your examples are from the 2% of movies that are deliberately confusing or known for their plot twists. If you look at IMDB's "Best Movies of all time," while I strongly disagree with the list, I'm sure she'd be fine the large majority of movies there.
    via u/No_Beautiful5200
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    It comes across like you're searching hard for some way to put her down. You're embarrassed by her because she didn't get the plot twists of Shutter Island? She likes to watch movies, it's an activity you do with friends, but she's only capable of movies that are famously stupid?
    via u/No_Beautiful5200
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    Sigh_... • . 8h ago Edited 8h ago • YTA for selecting Memento as the film you tried to bring her in on for the first one, you knew what you were doing and there are hundreds of brilliant films that don't completely challenge how films are structured. Why not just be done with it and choose Tenet? Some films are hard to pick everything up on first time and Nolan is a master at this. Very unfair thing to do imo. Should've picked a good film without an intentionally complicated structure.
    via u/Sigh_Bapanaada
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    Snow2D • 8h ago. It would be one thing if you had communicated to her that you don't want to explain movies to her. But instead you manipulated her into thinking that you only liked simple movies. Not only that, but you seem more concerned about her coming across as dumb than you are concerned about having to explain the plot. Bruh, it's her sister, surely her sister knows that she's bad at understanding movies. YTA. You should have communicated like an adult.
    via u/Snow2D

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