Life happens fast when you are married with five kids by the age of twenty-eight, but for one wife in Idaho, a recent personal victory turned into an absolute emotional crash-landing thanks to her husband’s condescending attitude. Imagine being a mom to five little ones—including a set of eighteen-month-old twins—recovering from a brutal, bedridden postpartum period, and deciding to finally finish your high school education. Most people would be popping champagne or at least offering a high-five, but this husband decided that his “important client email” was more significant than his wife’s major life milestone.

The couple has been married for seven years, and they have been busy to say the least. With children aged six, four, three, and the toddlers, the wife’s goal of graduating high school back in the day got completely sidelined by her husband’s career and the demands of parenthood. After the twins were born, she faced a long recovery that kept her off her feet, which is when she decided to finally tackle her GED. She didn’t just half-heartedly browse the internet; she enrolled in online prep classes and spent her limited free time studying between school drop-offs and childcare duties.

Instead of seeing a woman reclaiming her education and building a foundation for her future, her husband saw something “rudimentary.” He sat back and watched her study, judging the material and convincing himself that a GED “basically means nothing” for her career. While she was working hard to prove something to herself, he was busy calculating that she wouldn’t be able to apply it to a job for at least fifteen years. It is a level of haughty dismissal that would make any partner feel like their efforts were totally worthless.

The scene where she finally passed is honestly heartbreaking to read. She ran into the room, beaming with pride, shouting, “I passed, I passed!” Most of us would expect a “Great job, babe!” or at least a look up from the screen. Instead, this guy just nodded and went right back to his email. When she—rightfully—got upset, he didn’t apologize. He doubled down, telling her that it was “no big deal” and basically implied the only value in the whole process was that the money wasn’t a total waste if it made her feel better.

The emotional commentary here is just heavy. The wife is looking at these “building blocks” as a way to eventually start a career and find her identity outside of being a stay-at-home mom. She worked through the haze of raising five kids to accomplish something she missed out on as a teenager. For her husband to call it “easy” just because he didn’t find the math problems challenging is a total ahole move. It ignores the discipline and mental energy it takes to study when you are essentially running a small daycare at home.

The OP argues that she won’t be finishing college for another fifteen years anyway, so why get excited now? It is a cold, calculated way to look at a marriage. If you only celebrate your partner when they achieve something that has “immediate applicability” to your bank account, you aren’t really a partner; you’re an auditor. He completely sucked the joy out of her accomplishment because he decided, in his infinite wisdom, that her degree wasn’t prestigious enough to warrant a break from his inbox.

It is a total bullsh!t excuse to say he was “glad she had something to challenge her” while she couldn’t care for the kids. That isn’t a compliment; it’s a backhanded way of saying she was just doing a hobby to keep her brain busy while she was “useless” in the mobility department. His lack of empathy for her journey from being bedridden to being a high school graduate is glaring. He seems more concerned with his dad’s company and his “investor relations” role than the fact that the mother of his five children just reached a goal she’s had for seven years.

The wife is understandably crushed. She told him she worked very hard, and instead of hearing her, he just looked at the “job prospects” for community college students and decided it wasn’t worth his enthusiasm. It is a k!ller blow to someone’s self-esteem to have their spouse tell them their hard work is “no big deal.” Marriage is supposed to be about being each other’s biggest cheerleaders, not the person who sits in the corner with a scorecard pointing out that you didn’t score high enough to matter.

This story is a vital reminder that support isn’t about the difficulty of the task; it’s about the person doing it. Whether she was graduating from Harvard or passing a high school equivalency test, she was asking her husband to see her and be proud of her. He chose to stay “hands-off” and judgmental, effectively telling her that her growth doesn’t count unless it fits into his narrow view of success.

So, is he the ahole? Yes. A resounding, client-email-answering yes. He let his own haughty perspective on education ruin a beautiful moment for his wife. We hope she takes those building blocks and keeps right on going, whether he’s cheering for her or not. Hopefully, she finds some friends who know how to actually celebrate a win!

What would you do if your partner dismissed your hard work as “rudimentary”? Is he just being “realistic,” or is he a total ahole for not being excited? Let us know in the comments if you’ve ever had a “no big deal” moment that actually felt like a huge betrayal!