Woman Leaves Clingy, Anemic Boyfriend at Home to Go to an Event. Was She Wrong?
“When I saw the title, I expected it to be cancer, some kind of degenerative disorder, or something requiring major surgery. Anemia is generally a completely treatable condition that has no impact on quality of life, and unless the doctor referenced a concern about a more serious condition, it’s reasonable to assume that supplements are all that is needed at this point. It sounds more like he’s using it as an excuse to get out of something he didn’t want to do, then taking it a step further to try to manipulate you. NTA.”
This award-winning comment was shared by Material-Profit5923 in reaction to a post that’s now deleted on Reddit’s r/AmItheA–hole forum. But the interesting story was also published in Newsweek, with expert advice from a licensed mental health counselor.
The Original Poster wrote the following details about her problem with her boyfriend: “I work in event planning, so I always get invites or tickets to go high-end events. There was a huge event coming up that I was really excited to go to. I asked my boyfriend three days before the event to accompany me, and he said yes. On the day of the event, he said [h]e had a doctor’s appointment so he wasn’t sure if he could still attend.”
Two hours passed, and OP received a text message from her boyfriend that he’s been diagnosed with anemia. His doctor told him that he has to take supplements. Hearing it, OP told her boyfriend how sorry she was, but she also tried to boost his spirit. She also said that she would always take care of him and be there for him when he needed her. That was how much she loved him.
Then, remembering the event that she was going to attend, OP continued in her post, “I then asked if he would still like to attend the event with me to take his mind off of things, to which he responded that he doesn’t like the artists performing, so he’d rather go to another event. I said ‘No Problem, I will go with my stepsister alone.’ He got upset and hung up.”
That reaction took OP by surprise. Later, they had an argument, and her boyfriend accused her of being ignorant and selfish and said that her priorities were misplaced.
Of course, those criticisms hurt OP.
Not surprisingly, the majority of the AITA community was on her side, too. In fact, the commenters were so angry with OP’s boyfriend that the moderators had to lock the conversation.
Meanwhile, Melanie Cooke, a licensed mental health counselor, told Newsweek, “Making time for your partner has to be an active choice and an intentional top priority among all the other priorities and choices we have to make in the day. I often see couples assume that any ‘leftover’ time in their day is what will be dedicated to their partner, but there are two major issues with this passive stance — 1) realistically, we don’t have as much ‘extra’ time as we think we will, and 2) free time and availability are two very different things. Partners don’t just need your time, they need you to be emotionally available and engaged.”
But, in this story, it concerned just a single event, so it would be hard to judge if OP was really being negligent of her boyfriend. Also, it was already planned prior to her boyfriend’s diagnosis, and the diagnosis was not that of a very serious illness. Millions of people around the world are anemic, and life goes on pretty much normally.
Also, weighing the kind of career she has, it entails a lot of activities outside the home, and she also has to interact with a lot of people.
For any relationship to succeed, it has to be a two-way street in terms of communication, respect, understanding, and adaptation to each other’s situation. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Both of them could stand to be more understanding, but the boyfriend could probably have gotten over himself for one night and waited to talk in more detail about his health condition until after his girlfriend’s big event.
