throwaway for privacy reasons
i (m24) have been dating my partner marlee (f25) for just over two years. we live together, have talked about long-term plans, and overall things have been good. we’ve had some communication issues in the past and even did a few months of couples counseling last year, which i thought helped.
i’m currently in college studying psychology, and this semester we’ve been learning about exposure therapy and desensitization. i find it fascinating and talk about it a lot at home. marlee knows this and knows i sometimes get excited about applying concepts to real life.
marlee is very sensitive to certain things. dust, bugs, and especially smoke. candles, cooking smoke, or fog machines make her immediately leave the room and get visibly upset. she’s never explained why beyond saying it freaks her out, and to me her reaction always felt disproportionate.
here’s where i may be the asshole. a friend of mine caleb (m25) had a small smoke machine he wasn’t using anymore. i bought it, thinking it could be a controlled, real-world example of exposure therapy. caleb warned me it was a bad idea, but i brushed it off, believing i understood the science.
i didn’t tell marlee beforehand because i didn’t want to spike her anxiety. i also felt she had a responsibility to clearly communicate boundaries instead of assuming i’d just know.
one night, i asked her to come into our bedroom and turned on the smoke machine. some dust and a couple of dead bugs came out with it. when she stepped inside, i closed the door behind her. not locked, just closed. i thought immediate escape would defeat the purpose.
she froze, then started coughing and screaming for me to open the door. she began sobbing, clawing at the handle, and sliding down the wall. i immediately opened the door, but she ran to the bathroom, locked herself in and cried and hyperventilated for almost three hours.
when she came out, she was furious and told me i had trapped her and recreated something traumatic. that’s when she told me for the first time about how her childhood home burned down and that smoke, dust, and bugs remind her of that night.
i was stunned and told her i never would have done this if i’d known. she said i should have known better anyway. she packed a bag and left to stay with her sister. since then, her sister and friends have been calling me abusive and reckless. i feel awful that she was hurt, but i also feel like i’m being painted as a monster for what i see as a badly executed but well-intentioned mistake.
AITA?
Massive YTA – how is secretly planning and then carrying out exposure to someone’s known an accident? This is also hugely unethical.
YTA. This can’t be real. First of all, it doesn’t sound very “accidental”, considering you KNEW it would cause her anxiety (you said you didn’t tell her for this reason), AND you already knew she gets upset when there’s smoke (and bugs). It’s not your job to “teach her” or do “exposure therapy” on her. You’re not her therapist, you’re her partner. It’s not your job to teach her a lesson or try to “fix” her without her consent. If you had questions about her reaction to smoke, why didn’t you just ask her?
I fail to see how this was “well-intentioned”, since you’re clearly not trained to administer any sort of exposure therapy (learning about it in class does not make you a licensed therapist). You did the opposite of helping her, you made her feel unsafe. This was incredibly messed up, and I’m not sure how you wrote out this whole post without realizing it.
Men
YTA.
You’re a student, not a mental health professional. You don’t know how exposure therapy works, you don’t have the skill to properly monitor, de escalate or offer the proper context or aftercare.
Your actions were at best foolish and arrogant, at worst, intentionally harmful. Hopefully nearer to the former.
Even trained professionals wouldn’t do this, they’d lose their licence and probably even get charged for this.
REAL professionals always go at their patients pace, they never ever cross that boundary and they never push that boundary either. Little nudges here and there, but no pushing. They’d especially never force a patient to relive a deep seared in trauma without consent either because that patient can spiral once they leave their office.
OP is totally brain dead.
I really hope OPs ex informs his university of what he did.
yta Nothing you did was an “accident”.
YTA. “Surprise forced exposure to a known trigger without context” is not exposure therapy, and it’s beyond delusional to think it would be. It’s extremely hard to understand how ANYONE would think it would be therapeutic or a good idea. Mind-blowing.
YTA, unequivocally. You EXPERIMENTED on your partner who trusts you, and didn’t have to give you a detailed explanation of why those things caused her so much distress, but you knew that they did and still carried on with your wild idea anyway.
You are in college studying this subject, you are not a qualified counselor or psychologist, and even if you were, you would absolutely be thrown out of a job for experimenting on / testing patients in this manner. If I were your partner, I am not sure how I would ever repair those bonds with you again in all honesty. You are supposed to be her safe place and support system and you broke that.
This is a copy of a similar story that was posted a year or so ago with a sachet of lavender in the S/O’s pillow. Spam
YTA. You know what’s a large component of exposure therapy? Consent.
Just wow! As someone who also went through college for psych, the 1st thing you learn is ethics and that no experiment is ran without consent!!
Beyond that, this situation is insane.. Just truly no words. YTA!!!
Why would you intentionally put her in a situation she’s not only uncomfortable in but you know causes her such a strong emotional reaction? Her sister and other friends are right, this was reckless, stupid, and not in any way how a significant other treats someone they love!
YTA! Exposure therapy involves the CONSENT of the person undergoing therapy! I hope she dumps your butt.
It was not a well-intentioned mistake, even though you didn’t know why she had those fears you knew she had those fears and you trapped her with them without her consent or any sort of professional medical boundaries in place
Exposure therapy relies on a few key elements you were missing
1.) The patient needs to be fully informed and give consent
2.) It happens in small doses at a time that are carefully controlled and planned
3.) The patient can choose to stop it at any moment
What you did was a sick twisted sadistic experiment.
I refuse to believe you’re too stupid to realize basic common sense such as “don’t just lock them with their fears and hope for the best.”
You are a walking red flag and I hope she dumps your ass.
You are a disgusting failure of a person.
You’re not being painted as a monster, you are a monster, and you know it.
YTA YTA YTA YTA YTA if that wasn’t f**cking clear