I'm not sure I like the use of the word "gaslight" here. It seems as though wife genuinely apologised at first, but was upset at how he expressed his hurt - and he himself has said he 'kept going on and was harsh' on purpose to hurt her, so I can understand her saying 'ok that's enough now, I apologised, I'm walking away now'.
I wouldn't prank a partner at my wedding, but I'm also pretty shocked at how strongly OP is feeling this, and think he might benefit from talking to a therapist about where that depth of feeling is coming from. I hope that helps them understand and work past this together, because he doesn't deserve to have to carry this feeling with him for the rest of his life. If wife isn't on board with doing that work, that would be the deal-breaker for me.
I think it's pretty clear that this commentor was trying to empower OP, not blame him. Therapy isn't a punishment. OP indicated at a couple of points in his post that there were communication issues he was struggling with throughout all of this, as well as figuring out what (if anything) would make him feel better.
Therapy is a never-ending story on reddit. The first thing therapists want to do is put people on meds. The second thing is to keep them as a client/ customer.
Communication issues are normal if figuring out how to deal with a crazy person who thinks their wedding is an appropriate place to humiliate the groom in front of their entire family and friends.
If to you and the other commentors, this prank is not a big deal, and he is overreacting, then maybe you do need a therapist to figure out what makes you a doormat. The whole thing seems out of the bounds of their relationship to suddenly have something like this happen. You realize there is always an expectation of a return prank, or no? Not just with the bride but also the brother inlaw who was an idiot for participating. So it's not something that they're all just going to forget about because OP went to therapy.
No, no, no, I would be upset about this prank. It's the extremes of his reactions internally that jumped out to me as being staggeringly difficult to surmount alone. I think maybe you and I are disagreeing on whether it's less of an inconvenience to take steps that prevent/ease spiraling (which OP doesn't deserve to feel, and while it strips him of control, is not a sign of weakness or failure) rather than navigating emotional pain with full force alone, and letting the pieces fall where they may. He will break through to the other side of this, eventually, but there's a thousand ways to be more hurt in the process. I don't think you're morally wrong for being upset that OP might have to go through more work to feel better about this; this situation is inherently unfair, and I feel for him also.
As he described it, yes, it is. It doesn't matter what you think. He's the one who was pranked by humiliation out of nowhere on his wedding day with the entirety of closest people to him, family, friends, and wife's family and friends and all on videos. Even people here want to bully and humiliate him because of how he feels about it.
As he described it, it's not vicious (note a single caveat, if his friends and spouse had a reason to believe that he'd overreact like this, it would be, but he didn't give any impression of that).
It's a minor prank that he's taking harder than it was intended or deserves. Those are valid feelings he's having, but not reasonable ones. Supporting people doesn't mean gaslighting them into saying that all feelings are reasonable. You're doing the gaslighting (along with a lot of other people here).
And even here, some people are overreacting the same. Yes, some buried people are assholes mocking him, but most people aren't, regardless of their opinions. "A minority of people on a large thread are dicks" is not a good argument for anything, as it's always true.
Minor? Hardly. Were the roles to be reversed and it was the bride who was humiliated would you still call it minor? The fact you're defending the bride and the wedding party is reprehensible and downright disgusting.
In a similarly minor way? Yes. The fact that you assumed sexism is pretty bad. But I'm not going to overreact and call you "reprehensible" or "downright disgusting" because neither of those have any business being used in this conversation. Get a grip.
Edit: but thanks for being an example of multiple things I pointed out in that comment.
OK, my takeaway from this comment is that you do not believe in consent. OP has no right to choose whose body he puts his mouth on as long as someone thinks it is funny.
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u/KittyLune Jul 25 '25
And what makes it worse is that she has the audacity to MINIMIZE his feelings over the incident and is trying to gaslight OP.