Don't ask your spouse questions you don't want the answer to.

[anissa834]

Recently me and one of my brothers was chatting while playing grand theft auto online together and at some point, he talked about his wife that asked him if he is happy being married to her and he gave an honest answer.

He said he is happy in general wether he is married or not. He is happy with or without her and that is true.

Before getting married, he is been in several relationships and he always told me that he never cried over any girls and was always indifferent whenever his relationships would end and he always moved on very quickly and continue living his life as if nothing happened.

When he told his wife that, he didn't give me much details but he said she was basically offended.

Never ask certain questions to your spouse if you don't want the answer.

The very same!

Lots of assumptions here. There are incredibly supportive and loving spouses and grotesquely dysfunctional families.

Amazing!! 🤣

Agree. I don't see what he said that was so wrong either. Your happiness shouldn't depend on another human being. He didn't say he was unhappy at all.

I don't ask questions I suspect that I might not like the answer to. It's very reasonable to expect that people generally won't make unsolicited comments about your appearance etc, especially not negative ones. It's quite another thing to go around expecting people to lie in order to be your emotional support human.

Sadly, because autistic people don't wear signs around our necks, sometimes people ask me the "fishing for compliments" type of question and the simple fact that I freeze whilst desperately looking for an escape route (physical or verbal) is enough to trigger their offendedness reflex. And I won't lie because you need to trust me not to lie about your cheating spouse.

If I apply Benetar's Asymmetry Argument to compliments, I get:

• Not commenting truthfully on your appearance is never a bad thing and may sometimes be a good thing. At worst, the outcome is neutral.
• Commenting truthfully on your appearance is sometimes a good thing and sometimes a bad thing. At worst the outcome is bad.

The above is true for everyone, not just autistic people.

Basically, the neurotypical normative behaviour of fishing for a compliment to cope with insecurity relies on an assumption that the responder will instantly and undetectably lie on request. That strikes me as a seriously fucked-up behaviour to endorse and expect within any society.

Short but effective.

What a nasty cold attitude both you and your brother have.

I imagine there was a good reason his wife asked him such a question.

Reminds me very much of a conversation my, now ex-husband and I had when he told me, out of the blue and not in answer to a question, that he would never, ever get depressed and that even if I were to die he wouldn't get depressed.

Obviously, I didn't want him to be depressed but he made it sound like my dying wouldn't even make him break step and he'd just get on with life without pause.

Notice he's my ex, and he was, and is, also like you and your brother OP emotionally stunted and cold.

Of course your brother's wife was offended/hurt by his reply to her question. He sounds horrible.

You could not pay me enough to go back to the state of depression I was in that I would sooner stay with an abuser than leave because being with him felt better than being alone.

I say that it is not healthy to depend on another person for your happiness from personal experience.

You need to be happy in yourself before you can truly love another. Otherwise it's not love, it's psychological dependency, and they are not the same thing.

Kindly and genuinely - consider therapy.

Your argument attempts to justify cruelty by disguising it as a rejection of societal expectations, but it misses the nuance that’s essential to genuine human connection. Just because you feel alienated from social conventions doesn’t absolve you of the responsibility to engage with the world in a way that doesn’t cause unnecessary harm. Social etiquette isn't just about deception; it's about maintaining basic respect and consideration for others, which includes understanding their vulnerabilities.
When someone asks if they look fat, they’re not asking for an objective critique—they’re seeking reassurance or comfort, not brutal honesty. Dismissing their feelings as "rude" or "manipulative" doesn't make you some sort of moral crusader; it makes you someone who is unwilling to acknowledge the complexity of human emotions and interactions.
Being autistic doesn’t give you carte blanche to ignore the emotional impact of your words. Yes, honesty is important, but there’s a difference between telling the truth and being needlessly harsh.
It’s entirely possible to remain authentic without being cruel or alienating, and it's part of growing up to learn that sometimes, choosing kindness over bluntness is not only ethical but also necessary for maintaining meaningful relationships.
No one is asking you to lie; we’re asking you to engage with others in a way that accounts for their humanity, flaws, and insecurities—just as you’d want them to do for you. Emotional labour isn’t about being someone’s personal therapist, but it is about recognising that everyone, regardless of their social awareness or self-perception, deserves a modicum of empathy.

Never ask certain questions to your spouse if you don't want the answer.

Or, just ensure that one's spouse is not your dreadful brother.

It’s not just a question of being happy with or without a spouse, it’s being happy with that specific spouse, that they enhance your already happy life. You and your brother both sound emotionally stunted. Did you grow up in an emotionally austere household?

Why on earth did he get married at all?

Neither of you have any empathy or emotional awareness it sounds like.

There's a reason she asked that question and the answer has probably given her more answers than just what he said.
Still, if she ditches him. I'm sure he'll get over it without a backwards glance

This is interesting. As a young twenty-something, I may well have given the blunt and matter-of-fact answer "I would be over it very quickly if our relationship ended, I would move on and get on with my life", if my partner had asked me that. I did find out the hard way that blunt-but-true answers can have disastrous consequences, with certain people. It might be my upbringing: in my family, we did tend to talk about "what ifs" with a certain bluntness. As a teenager, I remember asking my parents out of the blue "what would you do if I suddenly ran away?", purely out of practical interest. The idea that my parents might be shocked by the question itself simply did not occur to me, or if they might wonder if I was asking because I was thinking of doing so. My mum has a habit of asking questions to which there is only one realistic answer, such as "you did get travel insurance, didn't you?" What am I going to say to that but "yes of course"? I have sometimes deliberately given the "wrong" answer to questions like that, to highlight the absurdity of the question.

I've since learned to be more careful about what I ask, and that in general, questions are asked with a motive in mind, and that simply asking a question often implies an intention. But I didn't really learn this until my thirties. I was a very slow learner of reading people, and I'm probably still not very good at it.

If I was her colleague I'd not be complaining!

😂

Some people have the Emotional Intelligence of a gnat.

Also if there is no point to her in his life and he doesn’t care of he has a partner or not…why spend time getting into relationships?

Why not just remain single?

I'm perfectly happy living on my own. But I loved my late wife and was devastated by her death.

Answering a question about how you feel about your partner with the answer to an entirely different question about whether you could be perfectly happy on your own sounds very odd, perhaps malicious, to me.

• @anissa834 - ah, IIRC, the OP,is that poster . You know, the one who got everyone's back up at work through her coldness and hostility to her fame co-workers. And now she applauds her brother's honesty and mocks his wife

Relationships and marriages are not met to last forever anyways... And your spouse won't have your back in tough times anyways.

You have fundamentally misunderstood the concept of marriage.

Free fuck, clean house and cooked food?

I'm like you and your brother, OP. Great attitude. No simpering and snivelling. I was married once, it didn't work out, divorced in a flash without a backward glance. Then I was single with a couple of fuckbuddys - very happy. Now I have a partner and we're good together. Great sex and company, but I'm not going to hang about when it starts getting boring. He serves a purpose. When he stops serving that purpose - why would I need him then and why would I be sad about him gone?

Like you say - nothing good lasts forever and people need to move on.

I had a partner like this for a year or so. We worked out in the end that he was probably alexithymic, as he never felt strong emotions either good or bad. He had had several previous knocks to his ego (mother rejecting him, ex-wife being pretty hurtful) but I think he was probably hardwired like this.
Delightful company but not partner material.

For me the death-knell was " I love it when you're here but I'm happy when you go too." He couldn't understand how that was hurtful, even after we talked it over as friends a couple of years after we parted ways.

I suspect that OP's brother is another such.

She asked him was he happy being married to her. That's a closed question. The answer can only be Yes, No or Don't know. If he'd just stuck at yes rather than adding a lot of extra detail there would have been no harm done.

Your brother sounds immature. He should be aware his words have power.

You say his wife shouldn't have asked the question if she wasn't prepared for the answer. Equally your brother is now going to gave to deal with the consequences of his answer.

Yes but that’s not the same as suggesting that you are indifferent to your spouse. I am a stable , financially independent woman but I love my husband and would be devastated if something happened to him. Your brother sounds like a total dick.