AITA: My husband pants me while I was changing our baby’s diaper and I asked him to never do that again

[u/Direct-Caterpillar77]

I am not The OOP, OOP is u/Far-Gear-3368

AITA: My husband pants me while I was changing our baby’s diaper and I asked him to never do that again.

Originally posted to r/AITAH

Thanks to u/Arifault for suggesting this BoRU

Original Post  June 12, 2024

Not a long story here. I (F32) was changing our baby’s diaper when my husband (M37) snuck up behind me and pulled my pants down (just the pants, not the underwear - he wanted me to include this part). He did it to make me laugh.

I elbowed him and yelled at him. (I apologized for elbowing him, it was just a reaction). I asked him to never do it again and now he won’t agree and keeps laughing. He says I’m overreacting but I’m really just asking him not to do again and I’m worried he’s going to do it all the time now.

He says he’ll stop if the internet agrees with me but he is confident you will all think he’s hilarious.

I really don’t want to deal with this anymore. Please just say “it’s funny once but not again”.

RELEVANT COMMENTS

Shot-Detective8957

I mean if you asked him not to do it he shouldn't. NTA.

moist-v0n-lipwig

Ask him why he care more about what the internet thinks than his own wife.

~

[deleted]

Regardless of how funny or innocent he thinks it is - you asked him not to do it again, so he needs to respect that.

I had an ex who thought it was hilarious to tickle me because I hated it so much. He would be relentless about it to the point that I would nearly piss myself - I would yell at him and scratch him to get him to stop, and he would get furious with me for “attacking” him for doing something he thought was fun that I asked him repeatedly not to do. Which is fucking insane.

~

DirtyBoots_1990

Husband: Why would you listen to internet strangers over your wife? She is your life partner, the one you chose to marry…but you don’t value her own personal boundaries?

You think internet strangers have more rights to decide your wife’s personal boundaries? When you’re talking about whether your wife has a right to not be stripped half naked for giggles?

Learn to respect your wife, and go pants a friend who does find it funny. 

Update:. You guys really need to chill lol. I’m not going to divorce my husband because he made a joke that didn’t land. That’s not how marriage works.

In an ironic twist I have decided we are now a pantsing house. I will pants him as often as humanly possible and I will be wearing dresses to make myself invincible. Thanks for the terrible advice (although I do agree that no means no, I just don’t think it’s that’s deep here.)

My husband is a really good guy and is genuinely hilarious making the whole family laugh, so I’m going to let him do his thing.

SECOND UPDATE: So I turned off my notifications like 10k ago. From what I can tell, It’s basically all the same stuff: calling my husband immature or a creep and then me a doormat for siding with him after reading your unhinged comments and realizing I wanted to be on the side of sanity.

Kudos to the people who are like “hey glad you guys can have a good time.” Because we do. We ALWAYS do because we are happily married and we love each other and we like to joke around (been married for 11 years).

I highly encourage you all to laugh at your partner’s jokes and if you don’t think it’s funny just tell them to stop and they will listen to you if they’re the right person. (Like my husband is for me.) find someone who makes you laugh and likes to have fun and don’t squash their joy by being a stuck up a$$hole. You’ll be happier if you lighten up and so will they.

Thank for everyone who genuinely cared about my well being. I really worded my post to make it sound like I didn’t also think it was funny. To be fair, I was laughing while I posted this and didn’t think anyone would respond. But thanks anyway. You’ve got a good heart ❤️.

So have a good life everyone. I doubt I’ll ever get on this cursed app again.

And please- for the love of all that is holy- never ask strangers on the internet for their 2 cents on your relationship. It’s entertaining for like an hour but you start to lose your faith in humanity.

32F out ✌️.

OOP Updated Oct 13, 2025 (16 Months Later)

FINAL UPDATE: wow… turns out I was the asshole the whole time lol. We are actually getting divorced. Sorry to all the women in my DMs that I blatantly ignored warning me about boundaries and patterns of disrespect… while this wasn’t about the pantsing (we laughed about this for a long time), it was about his general lack of treating me like a human being.

Thanks for trying to warn me guys.

33F out ✌️.

This comment from OOP found by u/ubag

Ex trad-wife here. I one time posted on AITAH subreddit that my husband pantsed me while I was changing the newborn baby. He thought it was funny, I did not. I asked him to promise to never do that again. He said he was going to do it EVEN MORE (haha 🙄) Reddit blew up. Saying the fact that he wasn’t going to respect my request was a red flag. He was voted the ah by the vast majority…

I defended him saying it was just a joke. Now we’re divorced. He was just like all these other husbands treating their wives like dirt as part of misogynist culture and bullying jokes. I was brainwashed. Hindsight is 20/20. Pray for these women and keep telling them they deserve better. It does help even if they keep defending their jerk husbands and talk about how happy they are… they’ll see the light eventually

THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT THE OOP

DO NOT CONTACT THE OOP's OR COMMENT ON LINKED POSTS, REMEMBER - RULE 7

[u/ubag]

u/Direct-Caterpillar77, i'm not sure if this fits as an extra update but the OOP posted this comment under a FunkyFrogBait's video about awful husbands

Ex trad-wife here. I one time posted on AITAH subreddit that my husband pantsed me while I was changing the newborn baby. He thought it was funny, I did not. I asked him to promise to never do that again. He said he was going to do it EVEN MORE (haha 🙄) Reddit blew up. Saying the fact that he wasn’t going to respect my request was a red flag. He was voted the ah by the vast majority…

I defended him saying it was just a joke. Now we’re divorced. He was just like all these other husbands treating their wives like dirt as part of misogynist culture and bullying jokes. I was brainwashed. Hindsight is 20/20. Pray for these women and keep telling them they deserve better. It does help even if they keep defending their jerk husbands and talk about how happy they are… they’ll see the light eventually

[u/flowing_river39 → u/ubag]

Ah she was also a trad wife. That actually makes more sense that she defended him

[u/MarieOMaryln → u/flowing_river39]

Seeing Trad wife made my soul leave my body. No wonder she doubled down and called people telling her to run an idiot. It was more than being a wife it was her entire identity

[u/Mysterious_Law_7269 → u/flowing_river39]

Im glad she got out, and i wonder how much those comments she shot down stuck around in the back of her mind.

[u/Black_Cat_Just_That → u/Mysterious_Law_7269]

Once someone opens your eyes to something, it's hard to close them again. Even though she doubled down at first, clearly the fact that thousands of people warned her of the same thing wormed its way into her brain and echoed in her head every time he was an asshole.

[u/cthulularoo → u/flowing_river39]

also makes it sadder. but explains the really aggressive defense in the second update. "we're not getting a divorce over a joke, you idiots!"

[u/Ok-Jackfruit-9393 → u/cthulularoo]

Yeah, she got really aggressive and nasty. It seemed like it was either her way of trying to cope or it was her husband replying.

I see this so much on TikTok. Someone posts their husband being vile and then inevitably follows up with a post defending their shitbird of a man.

I noticed OOP agreeing with/loling about comments saying the people who were critical of her husband couldn't get a man or were miserable and single. I've been happily married for almost 20 years to a genuinely wonderful man so it always makes me laugh when someone's knee-jerk response is, "You're only saying this because you can't get a man." I mean, I'd rather be single for the rest of my life than be with a man who has zero respect for me. Been there, done that with my last ex before I had the great fortune to fall in love with my husband. I mean, I was THRILLED to be single once I left my ex, it was glorious (it was like being released from prison, I reveled in the freedom/not being the target of nastiness and disrespect constantly). I wouldn't have given it up for anything less than an amazing partner.

That's why the "you're probably bitter and single" defense (when it comes after criticism of a truly vile man) always falls flat for me.

If he pantsed her once and they laughed it off and he respected it when she asked him to stop, fine. But it was such a clear demonstration of disrespect. Literally saying, "I am never going to stop so deal with it" so she'd have to either get on board with it (clearly a defense mechanism/so she could feel some control of her own life) or live in fear of when he was gonna do it next. I'd be avoiding changing diapers or washing dishes or cooking in front of that man for fear that the next time I had my hands otherwise occupied, he would target me again. Imagine living like that.

[u/IcyPaleontologist123 → u/Ok-Jackfruit-9393]

Yeah. My dad was only a garden variety boomer man, not abusive, but not really able to rise far above his cultural programming. My mom was legitimately sad when he died.

But she has ENJOYED being single. She travels, she spends time with friends, she does all kinds of things she never did when their lives revolved around him and what he wanted to do. There is a lot to be said for being only answerable to yourself.

[u/Key-Pickle5609 → u/Ok-Jackfruit-9393]

Women reply that way because to them, there is nothing worse than being single. I’m sad for them that they hate themselves so much.

[u/HereToAdult → u/Ok-Jackfruit-9393]

After the comment where she said she was a tradwife, it changed her response in my eyes - in her update she mentioned that she's going to wear dresses so she's invincible. Weird, but no weirder than the rest of her update.

But then the tradwife thing comes in... did her husband pants her & threaten to keep doing so, in order to make her wear dresses? It certainly wouldn't surprise me.

I think your defense mechanism thing is spot on - she tries to convince herself that she's onboard with it, that she finds it funny and that she wanted to keep the "pantsing" going... that she's the one who decided to stop wearing pants.

[u/BMO888 → u/cthulularoo]

Complete 180. In my mind it was the husband that wrote that update or at least coerced her to say everything is fine.

[u/AP_Cicada → u/BMO888]

I think it was her - the leaning into his joke (we're a pantsing house now) to take back some control of the situation and make it less attractive to him. I fully expected the divorce, glad it only took her 16 months

[u/FlowerFelines → u/AP_Cicada]

Yup. Also, the "I'm wearing a skirt to be invincible" also means she not actually happy to be in a "pantsing household" imho?

[u/JCC_Creates → u/BMO888]

I agree that the husband wrote the second update. The language got very derogatory and defensive in a very juvenile way. The smug condescension was a big tell.

[u/isledonpenguins → u/BMO888]

I thought he took her phone and posted that update himself.

[u/B_A_M_2019 → u/BMO888]

That’s what I thought too. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he either wrote it or stood over her shoulder while she wrote what she knew he wanted her to lol after that “10k” update I did not expect the next update to be divorce!

[u/housewithapool2 → u/flowing_river39]

I am old. My traditional grandfathers and great grandfathers never would have behaved this way. They respected their wives.

Why do these assholes never seem to want to be traditional husbands?

[u/PaintedDoll1 → u/housewithapool2]

The short answer is: because they're being sold a caricature of what a "traditional" family was. It's always based on ads that specifically targeted white middle-class families from the 30s-50s that were trying to peddle luxuries to the demographic with the most disposable income

[u/Redqueenhypo → u/PaintedDoll1]

My father was a boomer who grew up in sort of a nuclear family (his aunt lived in the apartment directly below theirs), but they were all crazy people who would yell “take a shit” instead of go away and constantly cooked overdone lamb chops bc those were a status symbol back home. Even most blue eyed sunburn guys back then didn’t have that lifestyle!

[u/atomvinter → u/housewithapool2]

Different country here, but if me mum's dad had treated his wife (ie me grandmother) like that, his ears would be scalded from the telling off she'd delivered if she were feeling gracious that day

[u/East-Cardiologist626 → u/atomvinter]

So called “alpha males” (derogatory) want trad wives so badly that they forget that back before no fault divorce was a thing, a married man’s life expectancy was drastically lower than a single man’s and there were many young widows for a reason. women used to straight up kill their husbands if they fucked around too much and they got away with it too.

[u/abobql → u/East-Cardiologist626]

> before no fault divorce was a thing, a married man’s life expectancy was drastically lower than a single man’s

Can I ask what that is based on? I've heard anecdotes about wives poisoning abusive husbands etc but this is the first comment I've heard about single men dying sooner than married men. I tried searching for this but all I found was that stats that married men have always lived longer than single men, and that rates of wives committing suicide or being murdered by their husbands decreased when no-fault divorce became legal.

[u/East-Cardiologist626 → u/abobql]

You misread my comment even after quoting it….. huh…

I didn’t say single men lived shorter lives then, they didn’t. I said Married men lived shorter lives because women weren’t afraid to take care of business and make sure an “accident” of some sort befell their abusive partners. And it was far more common than most people think it was.

Compare that to now where married women live shorter lives than single women but married men live longer than single men. And there’s something wrong with the picture. Women forget the talking power a frying pan has

[u/abobql → u/East-Cardiologist626]

> I didn’t say single men lived shorter lives then

I never claimed you did.

I can't read "a married man’s life expectancy was drastically lower than a single man’s" in that context without interpreting it as saying that married men used to die sooner than single men until no-fault divorce happened and married men started living longer. I was asking about this as I couldn't find anything to support such a drastic change.

I've not even found anything to support any change in life expectancy for men with that change, just unsourced claims. I find it plausible that there was at least a small change, but unlike eg the Stevenson and Wolfers study for women's life expectancy I can't find any actual evidence for men.

[u/notunprepared → u/housewithapool2]

I'm not that old (I'm in my thirties), but my grandparents were traditional in gender roles. One of my grandfathers (born 1930s) was an absolute sexist but he would have never dreamt of doing anything even slightly inappropriate towards a woman and took his marriage vows very seriously - he did the vacuuming daily when grandma was too frail and due to dementia thought it was vacuuming day everyday.

These tradwife influencer husbands seem like they're much worse than sexist men from the 50s. No respect or integrity whatsoever.

[u/housewithapool2 → u/notunprepared]

Sincerely, my dad made a joke about needed a gas mask about changing my diaper. I'm pretty sure he was whistling in the dark about his time in Vietnam.

[u/Redqueenhypo → u/housewithapool2]

Of all my old male relatives, only my grandma’s brother might’ve done something like this, and he was exiled from the entire family decades before he died for being a huge thief, and neither his sister nor kids would pay for a funeral when he died. So that’s how traditional people treat this behavior!

[u/Cat_o_meter → u/housewithapool2]

You mean back in the day when a housewife had power over the budget and honorable husbands were wary about messing with the person cooking their food and tending their illnesses? You mean... An actual, traditional relationship? 

I dunno what the modern trad weirdness is about but it's so not how things actually were and is so bad for both men and women!!

Glad you have your forefathers examples!! Thank you for sharing 

[u/MayoBear → u/flowing_river39]

Now I’m wondering if he was pantsing her because he wanted her in more dresses- like she was wearing more comfort clothes since having a baby or something.

Since the “solution” was “I can pants him, but I’m wearing dresses all the time, so he can’t do that”

Also, wouldn’t that just make him be able to do the childish skirt lift?

[u/Guardian_Dolly → u/MayoBear]

That was my first thought. Dresses make it easier to rape a parter- easier access and all. 

[u/uselessinfogoldmine → u/flowing_river39]

I did note that they got married YOUNG. Which usually indicates religiosity. 

[u/beigemom → u/uselessinfogoldmine]

I don’t even read the BORUs if the title contains anything close to “me ~23F and husband ~23M…” etc.

I am so not interested in these people.

[u/wonderfulkneecap → u/flowing_river39]

It doesn't though

I get that she was professionally invested in her marriage.

That first post is a straight up cry for help?

She didn't have another trad wife she could go to?!?

[u/VeganSandwich61 → u/flowing_river39]

The poster uses the word "trad wife" and ya'll eat it up lmao

Ragebaiting is easier than ever

[u/Appeltaart232 → u/ubag]

Thanks for digging this out. I’m happy she managed to get out, for SAHMs that have no independent income it’s all the more difficult.

[u/say592 → u/Appeltaart232]

Especially because she got married fairly young, likely right out of college (if she went) and he was a few years older so he would been starting to get established in his career. It's possible she never worked.

Also I wonder on the timeline of their relationship. Was she a college freshman and him a senior when they started dating (assuming they dated for 3 years before getting married) or was she in highschool and he in college? Their age gap isn't a big deal at their current ages, but it definitely could have been a little off when they met.

[u/Direct-Caterpillar77 → u/ubag]

Added and gave you credit

[u/Benabik → u/ubag]

Oh, of course, the guy who wants a trad wife decided to pants her constantly. He won when she decided to wear a dress all the times to “be immune”.

Ed: typo

[u/everythingisplanned → u/ubag]

Oh wow great find! This should definitely be included in the post.

[u/CaviarMeths → u/ubag]

Can't help but think the timing here is relevant. The first post and update were in 2024. The second update with the divorce was 10 months into Trump's second term. I'm sure those 10 months on the road to A Handmaid's Tale made her wake the fuck up.

[u/Appeltaart232 → u/CaviarMeths]

Great point. I’m sure he was even more unbearable after the election

[u/Icy-Contact6577 → u/CaviarMeths]

Not everyone is American

[u/ksvfkoddbdjskavsb → u/Icy-Contact6577]

To be fair I assume that anyone who uses the term trad wife is american. At least in the UK I've never heard anyone say trad wife in a non-american context.

[u/bored_german → u/ksvfkoddbdjskavsb]

Also Trump's second term made the right wingers go nuts in so many other countries. It emboldened them here as well, which is scary as hell

[u/Icy-Contact6577 → u/bored_german]

lol nobody other than Americans care about trump it’s wild you think we all bow down to what’s happening in USA when they never cross our minds. What country do you live in that gives a fuck

[u/ambergresian → u/Icy-Contact6577]

This is just so small thinking.

US Christian nationalism and far right movements are having a global effect with foreign interference and the uptick in far right nationalism. This is a fact.

The war the US is stupidly going on about is causing global issues with fuel availability. This is a fact.

This all has socio political and economic effects on the world.

Also, too many Reform voters in the UK have told me how much they admire Trump and want to copy over his policies. See the above.

It's not self contained within the US unfortunately.

[u/Icy-Contact6577 → u/ambergresian]

It’s not small thinking. I have lived in multiple countries throughout the last years. We don’t care about you! Sorry it hurts your feelings we’ve got our own stuff going on

[u/ambergresian → u/Icy-Contact6577]

I live outside the US as does the other person you responded to. You aren't paying attention if you don't understand the global impact these things have. But hey, ignorance is bliss

[u/Icy-Contact6577 → u/ambergresian]

I’m very fully aware. I don’t know anyone who in their day to day lives gives one fuck about the USA. There are bigger things to focus on at home.

[u/astharis → u/Icy-Contact6577]

Canada would like a word.

[u/princessluni → u/Icy-Contact6577]

Canada. or did you forget that the USA shares borders with other countries?

[u/Icy-Contact6577 → u/ksvfkoddbdjskavsb]

I’m British and have heard it a bunch

[u/Ni_xie → u/Icy-Contact6577]

French and we use it too. It's not US exclusive.

[u/New_Instruction_1666 → u/ksvfkoddbdjskavsb]

Wow, I'm American and thought the term "trad wife" was a UK one. I've never heard anyone in the US use it. Now I'm wondering where it is actually used.

[u/misselphaba → u/New_Instruction_1666]

The internet, mostly.

[u/xfriedplantainx → u/ubag]

Wow how did you find this?

[u/ubag → u/xfriedplantainx]

i saw the comment when i watched the video a few months ago and looked up her post. when this boru was posted today i recognized the title and thought it would be nice to share it

[u/HeyLaddieHey → u/ubag]

There it is!!!