Kate Hackett
We have another AITA for you that should never, ever have been in question — of course this poor girl is not the a-hole!
Redditor u/Competitive-Dot4612 felt so awful after her “boyfriend found my clean ‘period panties’ and made me feel crappy about it” that she took to Reddit for the advice of strangers.
She explains:
Hey all, my boyfriend is 27 and I’m 24. We’ve been together for almost two years.
She starts by saying she and her BF have been together for two years. He is very hygienic. Like, kind of ridiculously so.
My boyfriend is EXTREMELY hygienic in all ways. Like showers twice a day, washes his clothes after every single wear, don’t leave a single dish in the sink dirty. If you ask me, he’s a little over the top on how clean he and everything around the house needs to be 24/7. He will scrub his body 3 separate times in one shower cycle just to make sure he doesn’t miss any dirt. His showers are easily an hour most days if not more.
She, she says, is not dirty or anything, but she’s more relaxed about it.
I obviously have good basic hygiene skills, but I am much more relaxed. For example, I will wear a t-shirt twice before washing it so long as it’s not stained, covered in something, or stinky. Or I might leave a few dishes in the sink for a few hours after dinner before I get up and wash them. He would prefer I didn’t and just kept everything to a T right away.
They were doing laundry together and were putting out their clothes to air dry. While they were doing so, he saw a pair of underwear that OP wears during her period.
Yesterday night we were doing laundry. We always air-dry our clothes to save money and to reduce fading and shrinking. Usually I am the laundry person but on a one off he happened to be the one to take the clothes out of the washer and lay them out to dry. He came across one of my pairs of panties that I specifically only wear during that time of the month.
Basically: they’re ugly, maybe blood-stained, and comfy. This is normal.
I’m certain ladies will understand that we keep panties separate for periods than we do for when we aren’t. Aka I have my ugly or maybe blood stained pairs for my period, and my cute and well kempt ones for when I’m not on my period.
But when OP’s guy saw them, he said she should throw them away because they’re “gross”. The underwear was clean, just had blood stains from previous spotting.
Anyways, upon seeing these, he told me that I need to throw that pair away and that it’s disgusting and unhygienic. He made quite a few comments about how gross they are despite them being CLEAN but just blood stained from a previous period/spotting situation.
OP tried to explain, but he just simply did not believe her.
I attempted to explain that I keep those pairs solely for when I am bleeding, and that it’s a common thing girls do but quickly stopped because I could tell he just disagreed with me and told me that he’s pretty sure other girls do not do this.
And the entire thing made poor OP feel very bad.
It made me feel really… I don’t know gross? Ugly? Alienated? I’m not really sure but it definitely made me upset and feel some type of way about something I felt was natural I guess.
She snapped at him and they had an argument. She isn’t sure if she’s right.
I snapped at him to forget my explanation because he’s just making me feel like I’m gross. And a small argument insued because of this. We ended up going to bed kind of frustrsted with each other but I dont think I’m in the wrong. AITA?
After a few Redditors suggested black panties, she explains why that doesn’t work for her.
edit to add that “black panties” don’t exactly work for me because I have an iud and my period (and spotting) is very sporadic. I could go 3 months without a period, or I could have it two months in a row. I could have some random light spotting, or the full blown waterfall. There’s really not consistency due to my iud. So I can’t exactly “plan out” when to start wearing those specific black period panties.
Of COURSE this girl is not an asshole. Reddit agreed!
“NTA – It is perfectly normal and hygienic. Also – consider for a moment that the two of you are hang drying all of your clothes to save money, but he takes an hour-long shower (and I assume a hot one) every single day. If he cut that down to 15 minutes, the two of you could afford to run the dyer every once in awhile. Which might be nice for, you know, the person who is primarily responsible for doing the laundry,” commented one person.
Another wrote, “NTA. Period panties are 100000% A Thing. If you keep them well washed, why waste money?”
