PEOPLE
Woman Abandons Husband in 100° Home After Air Conditioning Breaks. 10 Years Later, He Hasn't Forgotten
Now, the woman wants to know whether she was in the wrong — or if her husband is in the wrong, for continuing to recount the story
By Virginia Chamlee Published on October 31, 2024 04:10PM EDT
A woman who once left her husband alone in an overheated home while she escaped to an air-conditioned home of a friend says he still hasn't forgotten, 10 years later.
In an anonymous post on Reddit, the woman writes that she and her husband "had just moved to the Arizona desert" when the story began. She was in medical school at the time, working an intern year that she describes as " a year-long hazing ritual in which you work 80-ish insanely stressful hours a week."
One day, she arrived home following a 16-hour shift, only to find her husband "sitting in his basketball shorts and nothing else in a house that is, minimum, 105F."
"He tells me our AC died, he called a repair guy but won't be there until tomorrow, he thinks we’re fine to wait it out," she writes. "He has windows open and fans going and a big glass of ice water, honestly he is doing fine. The heat is so bad that I am bit lightheaded, but also too tired to problem solve, and I have to be up and heading back to work in about 6 hours, so I just take off my scrubs and try to fall asleep."
Twenty minutes later, though, she found herself "lying in a pool of sweat experiencing a heat so intense that it feels like a febrile 400 lb bear has settled on my chest and is panting into my face," she continues.
"I text my friend with a guest room, she says come right over, 30 seconds later the scrubs are back on and I am in my car," she adds.
And while she decided to escape the heat, she didn't bring her husband with her, writing, "I did not invite my husband, just said 'I'm heading to [friend]'s house, bye' and left."
"About 10 minutes into being in the AC I realized that leaving my husband in a house that was literally suffocating me wasn’t super kind. I called and told him to he was welcome to come over [but] he was doing fine and stayed in the hell house," she adds.
In the years since, her husband has not forgotten that night, and takes "much joy from recounting this story," she writes, "always with the tone of 'isn't it hilarious how my kind and thoughtful wife becomes a total AH when she overheats.' "
In the last month alone, the woman says that her husband has recounted the story "to some new parent friends of ours and our regular babysitter."
Hearing the story over and over, she adds, has made her question whether her behavior was really that bad. "Sure, abandoning your husband in an overheating home is pretty bad. On the other hand, he happily settled himself into that 105° hellhole, and did not take the obvious step of arranging a hotel room so that neither of us had to suffer. He dropped the ball too!"
She ends her post with a question to other Reddit users: Who was in the wrong? If she was, she writes that she will "swallow my pride and let him keep telling this story through our 50th anniversary."
But if not, she says she will tell her husband that it's time to move on and not tell the story anymore.
Overwhelmingly, commenters sided with the woman, with one writing, "It didn't occur to him to leave the house and seek somewhere cooler until he saw you doing it. He could have gone to a mall. He could have gone to a friend's house ... He has only himself to blame for his discomfort. Does the man have zero initiative?"
Added another: "Hubby needs to step up his game and find new material," they wrote.
