A woman said in a now-viral post that her husband wants to install home security cameras because he's worried she's having an affair.
Posting in Reddit's "True Off My Chest" forum under the username u/ThrowRA0ooO00ooO, the woman said she's not cheating and "refuses" to be surveilled in her own home. Her refusal, however, has made her husband even more suspicious of her.
The post has garnered over 8,400 upvotes and thousands of comments from Redditors criticizing her husband's "controlling" behavior.
At the beginning of her post, the woman said she and her husband recently reunited after a brief separation.
"We have had a lot of issues, but me wanting to go back to work after maternity leave was the trigger. He wants more children...and [wants me to be] a SAHM [stay-at-home mom]," the woman further explained in the post's comments section.
She assumed things were finally "under control," that is, until her husband woke her up at around 5 a.m. the other day, asking her if she was having an affair with an acquaintance of theirs. Apparently, a friend of her husband's accused the woman of cheating.
"This acquaintance is a friend of my sister's and she tried to fix me [up] with him during the time my husband and I were separated," the woman wrote. "I was never interested."
After several "long talks" about the accusations, the woman's husband said he "believed and trusted her." Still, he wanted to install security cameras for his own "peace of mind."
"I refused," the woman wrote. "He thinks my refusal means I'm guilty but I believe surveilling me is both humiliating and [won't] solve the problem because the problem is in his head...but he thinks I'm ruining our marriage when it could be fixed with a simple solution."
Baland Jalal, a neuroscientist at Cambridge University School of Clinical Medicine, told NBC News that "jealousy is hard-wired in all of us." And while Daniel Freeman, Ph.D., a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Oxford, said jealousy can sometimes be a "useful reminder" for people not to take their partners for granted, it can quickly become "toxic" if left "unchecked."
"What began as a partnership of equals can degenerate into an unhappy relationship of guard and jailer," Freeman told NBC.
To overcome trust issues within a relationship, licensed social worker Tamara Green advised individuals to talk openly with their partners and learn when to seek help from an outside party.
"Understanding yourself, changing unwanted behaviors, and seeking a healthy relationship can be challenging on your own," Green told Brides. "Find a qualified mental health professional such as a psychotherapist, couples therapist, highly trained love and relationship coach, or psychiatrist."
In a comment, u/ThrowRA0ooO00ooO told Redditors that she recently spoke to her husband's therapist about the camera ordeal, and learned that her husband "knows" he's been "possessive" but "can't control it." However, commenters rejected this and encouraged the woman to re-think her marriage.
"I don't know if your marriage will be able to come back without him seeing a professional for his paranoid and controlling behaviors," u/theartistduring wrote. "I wish you the best of luck. Do not concede on the cameras and check he hasn't installed tracking software on your phone or car."
"Forget the cameras. That's just a surface wound. Get a couples therapist or use any equivalent. Dig behind the root cause and tackle that. Or acknowledge that it is not worth it and start a healthy retreat for your own happiness and well-being and for giving yourself the life you deserve," u/iRimmIt suggested.
Redditor u/Grouchy-Butterfly-23 added: "Will you be allowed to read his text messages, track his location on his phone, and watch him all day? If he's requesting this then clearly he doesn't trust you, despite you not having done anything wrong. If he doesn't trust you, I'd show him the way to the door."
Newsweek reached out to u/ThrowRA0ooO00ooO for comment.
Other Redditors to go viral in recent weeks include a woman whose fiance' "snubbed" the birthday cake she made him, a woman who was "tricked" by her husband into attending a family barbecue and a woman who told her ex to cancel a vacation he planned with his girlfriend.
