Woman’s Open Marriage Joke Backfires With Divorced Friends
The Original Post
Obligatory “This happened about a year ago, not today, so sorry”
I (38f at the time) was spending the weekend at a beach cabin with a group of female friends, all of whom were married and had children. Of the five of us, I was already divorced (10+ years), two were in the midst of divorce, one to a nonbinary person and one to a man, and two are still “happily” married to men. All have at least one kid, and all were pretty much just bitching about their husbands/partners being shitty in a very hetero-normative, gender binary way that left them doing all the emotional and logistical labor in their relationships, including childcare.
So the fuck up: since we were sitting around talking about relationships, as you do, I made a joke about how no matter who it is, if someone says they’re opening the marriage, I assume it’s leading to divorce, and I’ve never been wrong yet. My two friends who were mid-divorce both gave me dirty looks, and then I remembered: both of them had told me the previous summer that they were opening the marriage!! I literally shit on their decisions in front of them, making fun of people who try to “save” the marriage by opening it up, thinking that adding “spice” to the relationship it will alleviate the stress of marriage and parenthood.
They both kinda rolled with it in a “you’re not totally wrong but jeeze” way, and i haven’t seen either of them in a while. Hope they’re not still mad!
TL/DR: joked about how all open marriages lead to divorce in front of two friends who had opened their marriages and then filed for divorce. Oops.
What Reddit Said
Reddit found the situation painfully relatable rather than offensive. Most users agreed with OP’s original observation about open marriages. However, they cringed at the timing and delivery.
The top comment perfectly captured the sentiment with an Arrested Development quote about open relationships never working. Meanwhile, other users shared their own experiences. Many confirmed they’d witnessed the same pattern in their social circles.
Surprisingly, few people criticized OP harshly. Instead, they focused on the awkwardness of the moment. Moreover, several users pointed to communities like r/OpenMarriageRegret as evidence supporting her theory.
The Verdict
Reddit’s consensus: awkward but not malicious. While OP’s open marriage divorce joke was poorly timed, most agreed she wasn’t wrong about the pattern. This represents classic friendship drama where an uncomfortable truth gets blurted out at the worst moment. In fact, the comments suggest OP accidentally voiced what many people privately observe about relationship experiments.
Original post from r/tifu (4,512 upvotes, 684 comments)