Even in the best of times, pranks tend to not be particularly fun. Unless both parties, the prankster and the victims know and abide by certain boundaries, pranks just seem mean spirited at best. But pulling a prank that literally invokes your loved ones childhood trauma goes beyond that into deeply disturbed territory.

A woman asked the internet for advice after her husband called her “dramatic” for freaking out over a horrible prank. We reached out to the woman in the story via private message and will update the article when she gets back to us.

Pranking your spouse has a lot of ways it can go wrong

Image credits: shotprime/Envato (not the actual photo)

But one woman was called dramatic for freaking out when her husband told her the house was on fire

Image credits: juriymaslak/Envato (not the actual photo)

Image credits: Far_Specific_3005

Trauma doesn’t just go away easily

Image credits: LightFieldStudios/Envato (not the actual photo)

The experience this woman went through falls neatly into the category of trauma. Simply put, if you’ve gone through an experience that was particularly stressful, physically or emotionally, you will probably have lasting symptoms. Depression, panic attacks, high blood pressure and all sorts of other issues are common results of situations like this.

A fire is not only generally traumatic, but it literally destroys a person’s possessions. It’s quite possible that a significant part of this woman’s early life was directly influenced by this fire, and that’s before we take into account the psychological impact. In the text itself, she mentions constantly checking the oven, candles, etc. This immediately points to the fact that this trauma has not been entirely resolved yet.

Trauma symptoms do tend to dissipate with time, but can “rear up” when something triggers it. Oftentimes, our minds connect entirely benign things with our traumatic experiences, leading to a disproportionate dislike of a “normal thing.” For example, this isn’t the case in this story, but it’s easy to imagine a person who simply can’t stand being around candles after having their home burn down.

Generally, just the “threat” of a trigger can be enough to provoke anxiety. This is already a pretty major disorder, but it can “flare up” and provoke full-blown panic attacks. If you are going to spend a decent amount of time with a person, it’s best to know if there are some seemingly innocuous things that might cause them real distress. Instead this husband took a vulnerable part of this woman’s life and used to pull a prank. Incidents like this would be enough to cause a breakup in a lot of cases.

The husband’s actions were downright cruel

Image credits: FabrikaPhoto/Envato (not the actual photo)

The consequences of being exposed to one’s trauma like that are often far reaching. The symptoms are many and generally pretty bad, ranging from insomnia to entire psychiatric disorders. These, naturally, cause a lot of stress to a person which also leads to physical issues. At this point, it’s probably worth reminding that this woman was pregnant at the time of the “prank” and causing her stress is the last thing anyone should be doing.

Given the wife’s experience and husband’s age (we are setting aside the age gap here) it would seem like he really should have known better. But the truly shocking part is how he reacted when she called him out. The wife had every right to be angry and he had the gall to call her “dramatic.” He claims the prank was harmless, but since he is not the “victim” of it, he has no leg to stand on and make this argument.

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It’s quite telling that in this relationship, she then went to apologize to him, which is a shocking set of words to type given the circumstances. Even worse, as if that is possible, he then refuses to accept an apology which he does not deserve in the first place. Fortunately, the vast majority of readers not only sided with the woman but started giving her advice on what to do. Hopefully, she can take on board their advice and perhaps get out of this relationship that sounds like it’s downright terrible.

Most people thought her husband was way out of line

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