Husband tries to sabotage wife's promotion with his coworkers, so the wife sends the evidence to HR: ‘I found out exactly who my husband is’

Author image for Lana DeGaetano
Lana DeGaetano • "Show me to me please."
Feb 7, 2026 10:00 AM EST

You would never expect the one person you're supposed to trust wholeheartedly would try to sabotage your career. There's a first for everything, though.

Picture this: You spent years of your early career trying to amount to something you would be proud of. It took years of grit, trial and error, and a whole lot of coffee to get to where you are. You have the life, the husband, the home—everything. The only thing that could possibly make your life more enjoyable is more responsibility, more autonomy. It's not every day that you have the chance to aim higher in your career and have it be an attainable dream. But that's exactly what you do: You turn your dreams into reality, evident from the several years you spent reaching for the stars at such a young age.

You wouldn't have guessed that the person who is supposed to uplift you, support you in all your endeavors unwaveringly, decides to sabotage you the moment you finally start to spread your wings. That's what happens in this next story between a husband and wife who work at the same company. The wife finds out her husband has been bad-mouthing her in workplace group chats, and the chaos begins. Scroll below to read the full story.

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  • businessman working in his office looking at his computer
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    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • "AITJ for forwarding my husbands group chat with coworkers to HR after I found out they were trying to sabotage my promotion"

    My husband (38M) and I (35F) are probably getting divorced and honestly I think I already knew that before all of this happened but this is what pushed it over the edge.
    via Friendly-Occasion364
  • We work at the same company. Different teams now but same department. I started as an admin assistant a few years ago and have been working my way up.
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  • Last year I was promoted to a project coordinator role which was a big deal for me because I worked really hard for it especially after taking time off when our son was born.
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  • My husband is a senior associate. Hes been there longer and hes part of this tight group of guys in the department.
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  • Theyre all pretty close and one of them is a director which has definitely helped my husband move up over the years.
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  • The directors boss is a woman III call Diane whos the VP of our division. I know Diane because we volunteered together at a community program a while back and shes always been supportive of women in the company advancing.
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  • Things between my husband and me have been off for a while. He stopped being interested in anything I had going on professionally.
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  • When I got the promotion he barely reacted. I thought maybe he was stressed or going through something.
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  • Then a few weeks ago he fell asleep on the couch with his phone open. I saw a bunch of notifications from a group chat and I know I shouldnt have looked but I did.
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  • It was him and three coworkers including the director. They were talking about me. Not just venting.
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  • Strategizing. My husband had been telling them I was "getting ahead of myself" thinking I could move up further.
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  • The craziest part about all of this? The sabotage didn't even work. His wife prevailed, and, evidently, he is completely speechless about it. His sulking speaks to the clear disdain he has for her for no reason, and he feels like even more of a failure for being unable to successfully cut the person he supposedly loves off from a promising opportunity.

    Divorce? We think so. What would you do if you were in the wife's situation? Would you feign ignorance, or would the tension and pent-up anger be enough to try and ruin him instead? Trust, after a certain point, cannot be repaired.

  • One guy said someone should tell me to "stay in my lane before I embarrass myself." The director wrote something like "just keep reinforcing that shes not ready and shell back off eventually.
    via Friendly-Occasion364
  • Works every time." My husband liked that message. Then he responded saying hed been telling me the workload at the next level would be too much for me with our son and that I should "focus on what I already have." I sat there reading it for probably twenty minutes.
    via Friendly-Occasion364
  • These men were actively coordinating to keep me from advancing at my own company. And my husband was leading the conversation.
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  • I took screenshots of everything. I was upset and honestly a little buzzed from wine earlier and I called my sister and she said send it all to Diane because she deserves to know what kind of people are running things under her.
    via Friendly-Occasion364
  • female employee speaking to human resources about a problem in the office
    via Getty Images For Unsplash+

    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • So I forwarded the screenshots to Diane from my own email and also sent a formal report to HR.
    via Friendly-Occasion364
  • The next week was chaos. HR opened an investigation. The guy who said "stay in her lane" was let go.
    via Friendly-Occasion364
  • The director got suspended for two weeks and reassigned. My husband got formally reprimanded and moved to a completely different team because the director refused to work with him after everything came out.
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  • I feel drained. I dont feel like I won anything. I just feel like I found out exactly who my husband is and it wasnt who I thought.
    via Friendly-Occasion364
  • We are almost certainly divorcing and he still hasnt said sorry for any of it. Just keeps telling me I went too far AITJ?
    via Friendly-Occasion364

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