I Took My Baby and Left My Husband After Revealing He Was Calling Me “SWMBO”

Family life can be much more fragile than it seems. And just one message can be the cause of a divorce. That’s what happened to this woman who shared her story.

A seemingly ordinary day became a breaking point in the woman’s marriage.

One woman, writing an anonymous post, revealed how one usual day resulted in an ultimate end in her marriage. Their son was 2 years old at that time, and the woman just didn’t see it coming.

Though, in her post, she admits that she should have, saying, “From the moment our son was born, nothing changed for my husband. He absolutely hated telling me what his plans were.” She described her husband’s “stubborn reluctance to tell us when he was going to participate in our lives.”

“That morning, he was in the shower when his phone kept pinging. Curious if it was urgent, I checked it and found a group message from his sporting club about a ‘do over’ planned for that night after a big post-match gathering the previous evening. One message stood out: ‘Don’t think I can make it tonight. SWMBO will say no.’ I was puzzled—what did ‘SWMBO’ mean? It seemed to refer to me, but what did it actually stand for?

I also felt annoyed that he hadn’t discussed that night with me before blaming it on me. So, I walked into the bathroom with his phone and asked him what ‘SWMBO’ meant. He didn’t seem upset that I’d looked at his phone; in fact, he was completely indifferent when explaining the message to me.

‘It means ‘She Who Must Be Obeyed,’ he said casually. In that moment, I felt like I’d been slapped in the face.”

This revelation was a wake-up call for her.

The woman was devastated by the message. After all, she wasn’t a strict mother to her husband, who tried to sneak out of the house like a teenager, paying no attention to his wife and child. In a relationship like this, there’s no room for respect or a partnership in parenting.

She declared, “I was never, ever going to kiss, let alone sleep with, a man who referred to me in that way after ten years together—even after becoming the mother of his child.” The author of the post realized that both she and her child deserved better. It was a tough choice, but after a week, she made the decision to take her child and leave.

We hope that her life has improved since then. Here’s a story from another reader who discovered tampons in her house that didn’t belong to her and decided to set up surveillance on her husband.