Sometimes you smell something and… there comes that gag reflex. You start retching, your eyes are watering, and if you’re particularly unlucky, your reflex succeeds in what it wants to do and… you know what happens.

There’s no way to turn your sense of smell off, so either you get away from the stank or you get the stank away from you (by binning it, for example).

Today’s story is about a woman who chose the second option and threw out her future brother-in-law’s steak, which sparked a massive family conflict.

More info: Reddit

Bad smells are awful in the same way as audio advertisements, since you can’t really shut those senses out

Image credits: Luiz Gustavo Miertschink (not the actual image)

The poster of this story was wondering if he was wrong for kicking his brother and his pregnant girlfriend out of his flat

Image credits: u/Thro-waway109

Image credits: Kasumi Loffler (not the actual image)

They met up for a small dinner get-together, but the girlfriend said the smell of the steak the poster was cooking was going to make her throw up

Image credits: u/Thro-waway109

Instead of removing herself, she removed the steak, throwing it in the bin, which led to the poster becoming enraged and kicking the couple out

The original poster (OP) took it online to figure out whether he’s a jerk for booting his brother and his pregnant girlfriend out of his house after the original plan was a small dinner get-together to catch up.

He was going to make steak for dinner, but when the GF came in, she immediately started complaining about the smell, saying that it was making her nauseous. OP didn’t have much else to do but suggest an alternative, but it really wasn’t what the girlfriend wanted and she ended up sending out her boyfriend to get Chinese food from a nearby mall.

The poster thought that would be the end of it, but after coming back from the bathroom, he saw that the GF was in the process of dumping his unfinished steak into the trash and to add insult to injury, she started spritzing perfume in the kitchen to counteract the alleged stink.

Although the girlfriend cried and protested that the smell was going to make her throw up and the brother tried to change OP’s mind when he came back, he was dead set on kicking them out of the home for this major diss. 

OP’s parents didn’t see it the same way, though, getting upset that he caused a lot of undue stress to the girlfriend, who is “just a teenager, getting influenced by her pregnancy hormones.” The cherry on top of this whole situation was that the brother got to sleep on the couch that night, even though he defended his girlfriend against OP (who was also blamed for causing relationship problems).

Many commenters disagree with the parents’ point of view, with pregnant moms even chiming in, saying that no matter how bad things smelled for them during their pregnancy, they wouldn’t ever have had the gall to throw someone else’s food out, especially if they were a guest.

Image credits: Yan Krukau (not the actual image)

Now, this may come as a shock to you, but never having been pregnant myself, it’s kind of difficult to understand the severity of the smell for the girl.

Besides other surprising symptoms of pregnancy, like a jump in gassiness, acne, or incontinence, a far stronger sense of smell is a popular one.

According to WebMD, many women become suddenly averse to strong food odors, like poultry, seafood, or, apparently, steak. A smaller percentage of women become more aware of their own scent, which can be embarrassing, but it’s nothing to be ashamed of, as no one else can sense the smell – it’s only your improved sense of smell.

To get another perspective about the issue, Bored Panda reached out to a woman who had hyperemesis gravidarum (HG) during her pregnancy to chime in about the story at hand. She wished to remain anonymous for this story.

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Although morning sickness and nausea are common during pregnancy, it sometimes gets to the point where it is excessive, with women not being able to keep down food and even needing hospital treatment. It’s likely underreported, but according to the NHS, it’s thought to affect 1-3 women out of 100.

Just keep in mind that hyperemesis isn’t your “normal” morning sickness, but rather a serious illness which isn’t understood well or taken seriously, but it caused our interviewee to lose weight during her pregnancy even though she started at a normal BMI and was hospitalized several times.

Because of HG, the main smell-offenders to her were pretty much anything. It wasn’t just food, but toothpaste would make her vomit and she despised shower gels. Things that were supposed to help would make her sick too.

Her food choices were very limited during the pregnancy, but sweets were the worst. She couldn’t eat chocolate, cookies, cake, nothing. The first few weeks after the birth, she caught up, though, eating loads and satisfying her cravings.

Because of HG, she didn’t have any cravings, as she was far too nauseous from it – even water would make her sick.

With all of that in mind, it’s quite ironic that even with HG, our interviewee believes that the woman from the story was “way out of line.” According to her, if she really felt sick, she could have just left the room.

The original story got upwards of 16 thousand upvotes, with 1.4 thousand comments to boot. The community judged OP not to be a jerk, but some did say that he could have handled it better. Others ironically pointed out that the “pregnant teenager” is mature enough to have a child, but not to know that you shouldn’t throw out other people’s food.

What are your thoughts on this story? Share them with us and the world down below.

The community judged that the poster wasn’t a jerk, pointing out that if she’s ready for kids, she should be more mature

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Image credits: Markus Spiske (not the actual image)

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