This whole mess started over on the curlyhair subreddit, of all places. See last year my then wife, Maria, learned her hairdresser was moving to London, and she wasn’t exactly thrilled by the prospect of finding a replacement stylist. What she needed was a personalized haircare giftbag, so I moseyed on over to the sub in search of product recommendations.
Imagine my surprise when the #1 post turned out to be a mirror selfie of my better half. Glorious, golden curls surrounded her delicate features, and in the comments, she mourned the fact her ‘proud lion’s mane’ may never look that majestic again.
I glanced up from my phone. Across the room, Maria lay sprawled across her favourite armchair, scrolling away.
Purely for fun, I awarded the post gold. Anonymously of course.
You should have seen her goofy grin. She hadn’t smiled like that in months.
“What’s so funny?” I asked, acting clueless.
“Oh, nothing. Just a silly message in the group chat.”
And that’s how I discovered the woman I married was ruthlessly aggressive behind the facade of anonymity.
Okay, so it’s not like I expected her and me to grace the cover of ‘Adorable couples weekly’, but from a deep dive into her posts, you’d think we were a clinical study in dysfunctional relationships. She transcribed entire arguments we had about how to fold the bathroom towels, made constant references to that miserable trip we took to Florence when the airline lost our luggage—which was MY fault somehow?—and couldn’t let a ‘whats the worst gift you’ve ever received’ thread over on Askreddit slip past her feed without mentioning the Naruto bookends I bought for her birthday.
Admittedly, I dropped the ball there. The rest seemed totally uncalled for, though. Don’t even get me started on her contributions over on deadbedrooms (let’s just say the terms ‘cold reptile claw’ and ‘repulsive little slug’ appeared multiple times).
She wasn’t much of a writer, but her work had real feeling behind it, which made up for the poor technique.
Was I pissed? You bet I was pissed. However, if I revealed I’d uncovered this ‘release valve’, Maria would only delete the profile and mock me on a new one. I needed to use this information to relight the fire in her heart.
With her birthday right around the corner, I studied her profile the way anthropologists study ancient civilizations. Buried amongst the endless comments about her horrible husband, there was a gloomy post about Maria’s favourite band t-shirts which didn’t fit anymore, and another agonizing over how badly it hurt knowing she’d never enjoy her late mother’s cooking again.
A vague idea took root in my mind. Up in the attic, I rummaged through musty boxes, gathering those old threads together.
On the big day, her royal heinous unfurled a blanket stitched together from the old t-shirts.
“Do you like it?” I asked.
She came at me with a flurry of kisses. I gave her hand an affectionate squeeze and promised the celebrations weren’t done yet. “I’m making a special birthday celebration dinner: your mothers spaghetti Bolognese.”
I’d hoped that might mark a turning point in our marriage. But Maria couldn’t even wait until morning to post again.
My jackass husband destroyed clothes with deep sentimental value.
Had to wolf down partners attempt at my mom’s recipe. Good thing she’s already dead, because this would have LITERALLY killed her.
She lied straight to my face. I couldn’t believe it.
Because I couldn’t keep my irritation bottled up inside, the toxicity from her posts soon seeped over into our day-to-day lives. Arguments about what to watch on TV would escalate until we both screamed so loud our faces turned purple, we’d side-eye one another for chewing noisily, and if we so much as brushed arms while lying next to each other in bed icy-fingered jolts ran through me. Maria’s attitude became more-and-more like her online alias.
By now, vague threats underpinned her posts.
My husband sleeps with his mouth open and it makes me want to throat punch him
It’s so suffocating living with my S.O. I swear, sometimes I could just slip a noose around his neck.
In the comments, a tsunami of people agreed she married the most unbearable prick on planet Earth, possibly even the galaxy. One Redditor asked her to cheat on me and write a dissertation about the experience.
There was no point delaying the facts: the rot had eroded our marriage’s very foundations. For my own benefit, I stopped obsessively refreshing the profile, because what was the point? Emotionally speaking, I’d already checked out.
In need of a good detox, I renewed my gym membership and went drinking on weeknights with high school buddies. Very soon Maria and I became strangers living under the same roof, homing in on an inevitable, messy divorce.
A month later, our 6th wedding anniversary came looming over the horizon. I expected—or hoped, even—the big day might pass without fanfare. Whatever celebrations I planned would only get shredded online later.
Imagine my surprise when Maria suggested a romantic, candlelit dinner. Even said she would cook.
As much as she’d hurt me, the memory of the love we once shared compelled me to at least try giving our marriage the kiss of life. I spent hours agonizing over a magical gift—one even the most cynical of Redditors couldn’t trash.
My lightbulb moment came while chopping onions late one evening. And boy, was it a doozy.
On the big night, a thick aroma of garlic and baking bed wafted out from down the hall, which set my stomach grumbling, already anticipating a nice, hot meal. With the sauce simmering on the stove, Maria disappeared upstairs and slipped into a form-hugging purple dress.
She sat me down at the lounge table, promised the food wouldn’t take much longer. I offered her a wrapped giftbox, but she said we should exchange presents after dessert, and then she disappeared into the kitchen.
When the door swung shut behind her, I sunk into my chair, mystified. The abrupt U-turn in her demeanour almost gave me whiplash—what spurred such a dramatic shift? I’d dreaded a tense evening full of snide, cutting remarks.
No doubt her profile would be full of emotional essays on how terrible she felt about putting me down, about how it took our relationship reaching the absolute brink to make her realize what an incredible, supportive spouse she had.
I grabbed my phone and opened Reddit.
Rather than gush about her wonderful husband, the posts continued on like they did before, explaining how I weighed her down. Thousands had been made since I stopped checking—in one day alone, she posted forty-six times. Forty-six. I scrolled with a mounting sense of dread, my heart doing pirouettes in my chest.
I think my husbands on the verge of walking out.
Partner stole 5 years of my life now he runs around with his dumb friends, how do I make him pay?
Intrusive thoughts keep telling me to murder my husband, and it’s getting harder to ignore…
These unhinged rants spanned two dozen subreddits, half of which banned her due to threats of violence. Several dedicated followers encouraged her along this path.
She’d officially lost it. Plunged off the deep end. Lost the last of her marbles.
One post in particular caught my eye over in nostupidquestions, made the same night Maria suggested we have dinner.
How much anti-freeze does it take to kill a man?
Just then, she came through the door carrying two plates and sent them down on the table. As she slid in next to me, a dry gulp seized my throat.
My eyes flicked toward the dish, back at her. I drew a deep inhale and forced a smile. “Smells…delicious.”
Of course she wasn’t poisoning me, how could I even think such a ridiculous thing? Just to be sure, though, I twisted some spaghetti around the fork, held it up to Maria’s mouth, and insisted she take the first bite. “You’ve worked so hard, you deserve it.”
Those luscious lips pursed shut. Maria’s eyes whipped between me and the fork, big and frightened.
“Is something wrong?” I asked, my heart doing pirouettes in my chest.
Wrestling the fork from me, she insisted, insisted I take the first bite, and then tried stabbing it into my mouth. With my mouth clamped shut tighter than a vice grip, I twisted my head from side-to-side.
Maria accused me of insulting her cooking. “How could you? And on our anniversary.”
I took a deep shuddery inhale. “Honey, did you use any…special ingredients?”
Those eyes, those big puppy dog eyes that I was once so enamoured with, shot open wide. Before I could react, Maria grabbed a knife off the table.
Fuelled by adrenaline, I stood so suddenly my chair hit the wall. As she lunged at me, my hands groped along the table for something, anything, to defend myself with. They landed on her anniversary present.
The knife came down in a shining arc. At the very last second, I held the giftbox in front of my chest like a shield. The blade pierced the outer packaging, becoming wedged on the contents inside, and before Maria could wrestle the knife free, I threw my arms around her waist, scooped her up into the air, and dumped her on the wooden floor, hard.
Her anniversary present—a chopping board engraved with my mothers-in-law’s spaghetti Bolognese recipe—fell onto the rug beside us.
I pinned my wife down, my thighs pressed against either side of her chest. Unable to wriggle free, she screamed and thrashed and called me an asshole. I summoned the police who quickly arrived and arrested her, after a whirlwind of gaslighting and crocodile tears.
Months have passed since that night. As part of the investigation, I shared Maria’s posts with the detectives. From what the solicitor tells me, her sentencing won’t come up for another seven months, at least, and she’s currently detained in a mental health facility. She gets one hour of supervised internet time a week, and wouldn’t you know it, she channels this into Reddit posts about how I’m the worse husband who ever walked the earth, how she’s going to beat the ‘phony’ charges, and then expose me for the monster I truly am.
And once a week, perhaps out of a morbid sense of lost love, I pour myself a large glass of wine, load up her profile, and dish out some awards…
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(P.S. the only silver lining to this whole mess was Maria helped me discover a bunch of funny cat-related subs, which cheer me up. Slightly.)