Halloween is the one night of the year when grown adults can dress up like a fictional character and eat fun-size chocolate for dinner without anyone raising an eyebrow. The people who love it start planning in September. The people who don't treat it like a long evening of doorbells and sugar-buzz strangers. Most households contain at least one of each, and they usually reach a truce somewhere around the second bowl of candy.
One mom-to-be spent weeks getting her house, her costume, and her candy stash ready for the big night. Her husband, the resident grinch, had his own plans for whoever knocked on that door, and the fallout split their entire friend group.
Halloween gives adults the excuse to dress like monsters, not to act like monsters
But one mom-to-be would soon find out her husband was a cruel creature both in and out of his costume
When trick-or-treat time rolled around, he scared off most of the children
His wife was visibly upset by how he treated children, and she gave him the cold shoulder ever since
People in the comments took her side, saying it's unacceptable to torment small kids like that
She came back with an update, saying that she confronted him and wanted couples and individual counseling
He responded very badly, became aggressive, punched a wall, and refused any kind of trauma counseling or therapy
She had a bag packed and left immediately, planning to file for divorce and full custody soon after
Halloween is a huge business in America. The National Retail Federation has pegged annual spending at more than $13 billion in recent years, and roughly 7 in 10 Americans take part in some way. So our mom-to-be wasn't a lone weirdo who got carried away with the fog machine. She had a whole nation behind her, and a husband who decided to take on that nation by growling at five-year-olds on his own front step.
His rough childhood is worth a mention, but it is not an excuse by any means. The CDC reports that about 64% of US adults have lived through at least one adverse childhood experience, and around 1 in 6 have lived through four or more. Holidays can dredge up old stuff, and Halloween was never going to be his favorite.
But plenty of people with painful pasts manage to hand out a Snickers without mentally scarring a toddler. A hard history can explain a bad reaction, and it comes with a free therapy referral rather than a free pass. She offered him exactly that, calmly, and he answered with a fist and a wall.
Then there's the "hormonal" comment. Pregnancy does send estrogen and progesterone levels climbing far past their usual range, and ACOG says around 1 in 7 women experience depression during pregnancy or after birth. Still, a person can be pregnant and correct on the same night.
Psychologists use the term ‘invalidation’ for brushing off someone's feelings by blaming them on something else, a concept popularized by Marsha Linehan, and it's a well-known fuel for relationship conflict. Telling a woman she's upset because of her uterus is a great way to make sure the real issue never gets discussed.
The Duluth Model's Power and Control Wheel, which domestic violence advocates have used for decades, lists intimidation and destroying property as forms of mistreatment, even when nobody gets hit.
Many women’s aid and rights groups recommend keeping a packed bag ready if you ever need to leave in a hurry, so her pre-packed suitcase was textbook safety planning. Her friends who took the Halloween drama lightly might want to reread that part.
The trick-or-treaters, meanwhile, got extra candy and a very sincere apology, which makes her the most responsible adult in the entire story.
Do you think she acted justifiably? Or was she reading too much into his grinchy ways? Share your thoughts in the comments!
People in the comments mostly thought his outburst was too much, and delivered all the answers she needed
