“AITA For Banning My Husband From All Doctor Appointments After He Repeatedly Messes With Me?”

Annoying your partner is a time-honored tradition, but it’s always good to know the time and place. An eye-rolling inside joke at dinner? Perfect. A physical prank involving a car and your pregnant wife? Questionable. Importantly, any good comedian knows that you can’t just keep doing the same joke over and over again.

A woman asked if she was wrong to “ban” her husband from her pregnancy appointments after he would not stop “pranking” her in the parking lot. We reached out to the author of the post via private message and will update the article when she gets back to us.

Annoying your partner is one of those little joys in life, indeed, some would argue that it’s a sign of a successful relationship. After all, if you feel confident enough to bother your partner, it means you know they like you enough to stay. It’s hard to imagine a relationship that lasts a few more days if neither partner feels comfortable with each other.

Some see it as a good way to “test” their relationship. It’s basically an open secret that many of us put on a bit of a show when we start dating. Just like in a job interview, you tend to put your best foot forward. However, the longer you are with someone, the more likely that your real self will come out.

This can and often does mean little jokes, phrases and behaviors that your partner might find annoying, just as they probably do something that can seem bothersome. So by “testing the waters” here and there, you can see how your partner reacts to something that might inconvenience them. If you don’t think this happens, consider the fact that your partner has probably done it to you.

There are always limits, as this story shows. Some folks just love to do things for their own amusement, for example, this man. As we can see, he’ll repeat the gag on his pregnant wife and still find it funny long after she is absolutely sick of it. Importantly, after being asked to stop he gets very defensive. This is a surefire way to damage your relationship.

Couples therapist John Gottman described the relationship equivalent of the four horses of the apocalypse as criticism, contempt, stonewalling, and defensiveness. There is not enough information here to suddenly speculate about exactly how this relationship works, but it should be understandable to feel frustrated if you ask a partner not to do something and they keep doing it.

Even worse, he throws a fit and gets angry, which seems pretty dumb given the fact that pranks exist to inconvenience someone. This is more concerning, we all probably annoy our partners or even roommates more often than not, but not to the extent that they have to ban us from important events. Some commenters note that perhaps she was a bit harsh, but this also raises the question of why he didn’t stop when she asked the first time.