By Ryleigh Simmons

AITA for leaving my husband and preventing him from turning back into a human after I found out why he kept disappearing for three days out of the week?

My husband (27M) and I (23F) have been together for a while now. Every week, he disappears for three days and comes back like nothing happened. Many people may be wondering why I have stayed with him for so long, given that he keeps disappearing, but you have never met my husband. He is a very noble and able man who is loved by everyone he meets. Our neighbors and even his boss adore him very much, and all of them know about his disappearances, yet none of them seems to be worried or discouraged by these leaves of absence. So, I put up with him leaving because I loved him, and I hoped he would finally trust me enough to tell me where he had been going. 

Eventually, my understanding and patient attitude started to wear thin. For months, my mind was thinking up all kinds of vile things he could be doing. Was he cheating on me? He and his boss have always been unusually close, and I did question it for a while, but I just assumed that I didn’t understand male friendships and their weird concepts of brotherhood. Did he have another family? Was he using drugs? Was he secretly an axe murderer or something? It got to be too much for me. I was scared for myself and what would happen if he was cheating. I was hurt that he still hadn’t told me what was going on. I was angry that he thought it was okay to leave without any explanation every week, like I meant nothing to him. But, most of all, I was tired. I was tired of being afraid he was out there hurt somewhere, tired of wondering if this was the week he wouldn’t come back, and tired of him acting like this all meant nothing.

Finally, I decided to ask him where he had been all this time. It took me so long to work up the courage because I was scared to ask him and anger him. He has never been prone to intense anger, but I felt like I didn’t know him anymore. But honestly, the truth was just as scary as not knowing. I didn’t have anywhere to go if I needed to leave. I worked from home and didn’t really have any close connections. But I knew I couldn’t live like this anymore, and honestly, I wasn’t even sure knowing the truth could help fix our relationship at this point. 

When he came back from his “trip”, he had a huge smile on his face and kissed me on the cheek. The kiss just fueled the fire within me. How dare he act like none of this matters, like I should just be okay with him disappearing to god knows where? So I asked him. I told him how I was worried about him. I told him I couldn’t take it anymore and was tired of being patient. He was hurting me, and I needed him to tell me what was going on. At first, he didn’t say anything, and then he tried to end the conversation. So, I gave him an ultimatum: tell me what’s going on, or I’m leaving because you don’t care about making this relationship work. 

He confessed. And Reddit, you wouldn’t believe what he told me. He told me he turns into a bisclavret (werewolf). Every week, he goes into the forest and turns into a beast that preys on the poor animals. I didn’t believe him at first — because who would — but I wanted to see how far he would take this lie. So I asked questions and he gave me details. He said that taking off his clothes and putting them back on was the way he turned. He’d always hide his clothes before going out so no one would steal them. 

I don’t know why I asked at first, but maybe it was just to see if he would finally slip up, or so I could check for myself, but I asked where he kept his clothes. He refused to tell me. It was clear to me that he didn’t trust me, and I made sure to tell him how much it hurt me that he didn’t trust me, even though he was the one who had been lying. I asked him what I had done to make him feel like I wasn’t worth being trusted with his secrets. He finally told me, and that was the end of the conversation.

That night, I remember thinking I didn’t even know who this man in front of me was. If he was even still considered a man. My husband felt no guilt about keeping this secret. He never even planned on telling me. I was devastated and scared. Sure, he wasn’t cheating, but he had a whole different side of him I didn’t know about. And if he was telling the truth, he turned into this potential uncontrollable beast, and I couldn’t help but be a little scared. I didn’t sleep next to him that night. 

I left him the next morning. I looked at him and saw nothing but a stranger. I was lost and felt I had no other choice, so I went to stay with an old friend. He worked at the same company as my husband, and it was no secret that he was in love with me. I loved my husband, so I never paid much attention to this man’s affections for me, but that morning, I wanted out, and I needed someone to find comfort in. I went to that man and I told him I wanted to learn to love him, and that he was the only genuine person in my life who never lied to me.

He took me in. I was just pleased to have some time away from my problems. In my distressed state, I ended up telling him everything. I told him all about my husband’s unbelievable life, and he comforted me throughout the story. I told him he should steal my husband’s clothes to see if his story was true. Also, it was the only way I knew how to return the hurt he caused me. I didn’t have the power my husband had, so I felt this was the only way for him to see what he had done to me. He ended up taking them, and we haven’t seen my husband since then. 

I now know I crossed a line. I left him, and I took the one thing that made him human, but I was just so angry and upset. I wanted him to feel sorry for what he did to me and what he didn’t do for me. So, Reddit, was I justified or an asshole? 

TL;DR: My husband kept why he disappears 3 days/week from me. Turns out he’s a werewolf and hides his clothes to change back. I felt him for a coworker and had someone take his clothes. AITA?

Edit: 

Wow, I didn’t expect this to blow up. I just wanted to let you know I have read the comments and can see I really messed up. I appreciate everyone’s honest feedback, and I can see clearly how taking my husband’s clothes and leaving him without any chance to explain was cruel and impulsive. 

That said, I have also seen a lot of comments on how I am not the only one at fault here. My husband did keep something from him and refused to tell me. That secrecy broke our relationship long before I left. So yes, I am the asshole, but he wasn’t blameless either. Maybe this could have been avoided if we’d communicated and trusted each other

What Is My Topic & Why?

I found Bisclavret to be one of the most interesting and fun reads we’ve done in class, and I knew I wanted to do my project on it. However, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do my project on or what format I wanted to use. Bisclavret had a lot of good potential topics, but I just couldn’t decide what to do my project on. That said, in class we started talking a lot about Lady Macbeth and how we thought of her as a more well-rounded character than Macbeth, which prompted me to reflect on how I felt about the wife in Bisclavret. More specifically, how she gets no characterization at all. I was interested in the idea that the wife, the only female character in the poem, is framed as an evil woman who has no love for her husband, which is why she betrays him. I could agree that her actions were wrong, but labeling her a villain without any background on her feelings or thoughts seemed unfair and unrealistic. That’s when I decided to do a creative project that would give the wife character more complexity and show that maybe she isn’t wholly the villain, and that Bisclavret isn’t just the innocent protagonist. 

Why Did I Choose This Format?

To decide the medium for my project, I actually looked through past projects, and while scrolling, I stumbled upon one titled “Bisclavret Knight & Lady POV,” which was posted in 2022. Unfortunately, I do not know who posted it, as there is no name or username on the post. In their project, they rewrote Bisclavret from the wife’s point of view, but they focused a lot on her internal monologues. I really enjoyed how they gave the wife more thoughts and a personality. This piece inspired me a lot and helped me realize I wanted to rewrite the poem. However, it also showed me that maybe rewriting the poem as another poem was not something I could do, as I am not great at writing poetry. 

From there, I remembered that in one of my previous classes, I believe Elliot mentioned wanting to write an Am I The Asshole Reddit post for one of the characters in our Global Literature class. I was not able to find his project if he actually went through with it, but he did inspire the idea. I wanted to use this form of media because I felt it would let me write down all the wife’s thoughts and feelings. A lot of people who go to Reddit, and specifically that forum, use it as a chance to rant or express their feelings after a troubling situation they don’t know how to deal with. They either have no one to go to or they are genuinely the asshole and have no one left on their side to hear them out. I think this format gives me a chance to express why the wife may have made the decisions she did. Also, I just really love watching people read Reddit stories!

The Writing Process

While writing my Reddit post, I didn’t want to completely change the whole poem because then it wouldn’t really accomplish what I wanted it to. I want people to read the same poem and, instead of writing the wife as a villain, maybe start thinking from her side and see where things might get a little more grey. Therefore, when I was writing, I made sure to have the original poem on one half of my screen and what I was writing on the other half. 

I started by outlining what I wanted to make sure I included, which was all found in the original poem. For example, it was small, but the wife mentions in the original poem, “But I’m afraid that you’ll get angry,/And, more than anything, that scares me” (Marie de France, 2). To stay true to the original poem, I include this in my story because I felt it was important to see why the wife might have left. She was already afraid of angering her husband when he was just a regular knight, but now she might be even more scared now that he has these terrifying powers that he kept secret.

I also did my best to use some of the same lines or wording from the poem, so there is still a similarity to the original, even though my piece is written in a more modern way. One of the places where you can see this most is when the wife describes the husband. I used the phrase “He is a very noble and able man” and described him as beloved by his neighbors because I wanted it to reflect the poem’s portrayal of him. For example, you see it here, “A handsome knight, an able man,/He was, and acted like, a noble man. His lord the King held him dear,/And so did his neighbors far and dear” (Marie de France, 1).  Finally, the last part of my writing process was about making my first draft sound and look like a Reddit post. Thus, I revised my writing, making it shorter and more to the point. Most people writing Reddit stories do so quickly, so I knew I had to do some editing. However, here is a link to my first draft, which has a lot more detail, and it is interesting to compare the two. I also added some standard Reddit features, like the TL;DR and Edits sections. The TLDR or To Long Didn’t Read section is just a short summary of the post, and the Edit section is usually where the OP adds more information or acknowledges what the commenters and voters are saying. I just wanted to add more elements to make the Reddit post feel more real, even though the story is about a werewolf. I also added the Edit section to show how there are two ways the “commenters” can read the wife’s story.

Why Does My Response Matter?

My response matters because it adds some perspective to the poem that wasn’t there before. While researching for inspiration for this project, I found a thesis titled “Marie de France and the Wife of Bisclavret: A New Understanding” by Katie Despeaux. In their 2nd chapter, they go into great detail about the different ways the wife is read and analyzed in Bisclavret. Specifically, they discuss how people tend to focus on how innocent Bisclavret is or how evil the wife is. One of the main lines in the thesis that stuck with me and really solidified what I wanted to do with my project was “The rigid dichotomy of villain and hero that is created by these narratives forces critics to view the wife negatively, without any nuance” (Despeaux, 33). This pointed out the exact problem I wanted to fix. I wanted to add more nuance to the poem, which is why I believe writing from the wife’s point of view is essential.  

Moreover, while I was conducting background research, I read parts of an essay by Daniel Alvarez. In this essay, they not only defend some of the wife’s actions but also discuss how the wife’s decisions are a result of the misogynistic society around her. Alvarez argued that while “Some may argue that the wife’s immediate action and treachery against her husband make her the villain of the tale, however, she had no choice if she wanted to preserve her well-being” (Alvarez, 2). This is something I thought connected to why my project is essential. I tried to point out in my writing that she didn’t really have anywhere else to go other than the other knight. Thus, my project is important because it calls attention to the fact that the story isn’t just black and white. It shows there is a way to read the poem that suggests the wife may be struggling just as much as her husband was.

Works Cited

Alvarez, Daniel. Marie de France’s ​Bisclavret: ​Criticizing Misogyny. 5 Dec. 2019, blogs.longwood.edu/alvarezdf/files/2020/05/ENG-215-BISCLAVRET.pdf. Accessed 24 Oct. 2025.

“Bisclavret Knight & Lady POV.” Sprockets and Springes, 15 Oct. 2022, nrhelms.org/2022/10/15/bisclavret-knight-lady-pov/. Accessed 24 Oct. 2025.

Despeaux, Katie. Marie de France and the Wife of Bisclavret: A New Understanding Marie de France and the Wife of Bisclavret: A New Understanding. 8 May 2023, pp. 32–41, digitalrepository.unm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1170&context=fll_etds. Accessed 24 Oct. 2025.