“AITA for unintentionally getting my fiancée fired from her job?”
My fiancée (24F) and I (28M) have been together for five years, and since the beginning, she’s had a terrible habit of ignoring her wake-up alarms. She sets 10–15 alarms over the course of an hour every morning. I’m the complete opposite—I’m a light sleeper, so once I wake up, I have a hard time falling back asleep. This makes it exceptionally difficult when a new alarm goes off every 10 minutes or so.
I work from home, so I typically get to sleep in until 9:30. She, on the other hand, has to be physically at work by 8:30 and typically has alarms running from 6:00 all the way through 7:30. Over time, this has made me resentful of her sleeping habits, and I’ve often resorted to sleeping in the guest room just to get proper rest.
Recently, her work schedule switched from mostly opening shifts to almost all closing shifts. This was a huge relief for me since I could finally sleep through the morning without interruptions, and we got to share a bed again.
Last Wednesday, I was jolted awake at 6 AM for the first time in months. Since she had casually mentioned earlier in the week that she was closing every day, I assumed she had forgotten to turn off her alarms. Wanting to get a few more hours of sleep, I turned them all off and reset them to 10 AM, her usual wake-up time for closing shifts.
When 10 AM rolled around, I heard a scream from the bedroom. Turns out she was supposed to open that day. She rushed to work but was fired on the spot for leaving the store unopened for well over an hour.
At first, I was shocked and felt terrible. But then I found out the real reason she had been switched to closing shifts: she had been repeatedly late for opening shifts, receiving eight warnings/strikes over a one-month period. Her boss had given her closing shifts as a last-ditch effort to keep her employed.
She never told me any of this. Keep in mind that at this point, I was consistently sleeping in the guest room, so by the time I got up for my job, she would already be out of the house, meaning I had no frame of reference to tell if she was running late or not.
Now she’s furious with me, blaming me for her getting fired, and even wants to postpone our wedding. While I understand why she’s upset, I also feel like this was entirely preventable. If she had just told me she was struggling to wake up, I could have helped.
She’s been distant and nasty toward me, and at this point, I’m over it. She made zero effort to do better when I said that her alarms were messing with my sleep, failed to communicate effectively throughout the whole situation, and, in my opinion, lied by omission about her standing at her job.
As of right now, I am back to sleeping in the guest room, and we are hardly speaking. I have told her that until she sees her part in all of this, there’s no discussion to be had. AITA? Here are the top rated comments.
Here’s what people had to say to OP:
YessikaHaircutt says:
This person is not responsible enough to get married.
jackiebee66
Seriously. She’s an ADULT. Part of that entails getting your tush out of the bed and getting to work on time. You’re not even married yet and you’re already sleeping in the guest room because of her several alarms. How are you thinking this will miraculously change once you’re married? If you want to marry her it’s time for a serious conversation. She sounds like she’s 5, not 24.
Informal-Arrival678 says:
NTA. Your fiancée didn’t get fired because you turned off her alarms, she got fired because she couldn’t show up on time nine separate times.
pineboxwaiting says:
NTA and don’t marry her. She’s ignoring the EIGHT times she had been late that had nothing to do with you. Do not tie yourself for life to someone who can’t even get out of bed in the morning. She’s irresponsible and doesn’t take accountability for her actions. That’s just not a good life partner.
EnvironmentOk5610
I think YTA for one ‘strike’ against her at her job, but SHE’S TA for eight strikes against her at her job! I think it’s reasonable for you to feel guilt for causing one ‘strike’, but she has to take full responsibility for eight of the nine, total, strikes that got her fired🤷🏽.
Don’t marry someone who can’t acknowledge that she got HERSELF 8 of 9 steps towards being fired ALL ON HER OWN and who has never figured out a reasonable, respectful-to-others way of getting herself out of bed in the morning!!
MuppetBonesMD says:
Side point that might help – she should see a sleep doctor. I struggle with this. I found out way too late that it wasn’t that I was somehow morally broken for not being a morning person, I have something called delayed sleep phase disorder. No amount of shame, loud noise, or expectation will get you up before your 30’s. It’s super bad in teenagers and young people who have it.
CrownxAdjusted
I can not believe we all had access to this post and believe he’s not the glaring as^%$le in this situation.
I am a fairly decent sleeper. I still actively set multiple alarms, even if I get up on the first one. Why? Because I want to make sure I get up. Your fiance set those alarms up FOR A REASON. To wake her up. You don’t need to know the exact reason as to why she set those alarms
Later OP came back with this update:
UPDATE: A not so great ending…
After a few days of barely speaking, she finally sat me down and said we needed to talk. I figured it was about the alarms and her getting fired… maybe an apology or some kind of resolution. Instead, she told me something that made the alarms seem like nothing.
Turns out, her chronic inability to wake up on time wasn’t just laziness or bad sleep habits. It was because she has been dealing with some serious mental health issues… and she had been hiding them from me for years. She confessed that she’d been diagnosed with having severe panic disorder and OCD.
Not the “clean your hands every 5 minutes kind of OCD, but apparently some variation that for the sake of not sharing incorrect information I will not try to describe. She has struggled with intrusive thoughts, which made it impossible for her to fall asleep at night. That’s why the alarms never worked. She was running on barely any sleep.
She admitted that she had been seeing a therapist for almost two years without telling me. Not because she didn’t trust me, but because she didn’t want me to think she was “broken.” The therapist had prescribed medication, but she stopped taking it because it made her feel numb and disconnected. That’s when her sleep schedule fell apart completely. She kept hoping it would get better on its own.
The day she got fired was her breaking point. When she realized I had turned off the alarms, she panicked not just because of work, but because losing her job meant losing the last bit of control she had over her life.
We had a long, emotional conversation, and by the end of it, we both knew where this was heading. We agreed she needed to focus on her mental health, and I realized I couldn’t be the person to fix that for her. We agreed to call off the engagement.
She packed her things and left on Friday to stay with her parents for a while. I’ve heard from mutual friends that she’s back in therapy and trying to get back on track. I hope she figures it out… I really do.
As for me? I’m doing okay. The apartment feels quieter now, and yeah, I still instinctively brace myself for those morning alarms but they never come. And honestly, I miss it. 5 years is a long time relative to our age. It’s a weird feeling being alone again, I’m starting to learn more and more about myself and I’m starting to feel like maybe that’s a good thing…
Not the kind of update I’m sure a lot of you were looking for, but if theres any takeaway, I think it’s a constant reminder to take care of your mental health and to check in with those you care about as much as possible. You never know how much the people closest to you are struggling when you aren’t paying attention.
Thank you to everyone who has responded to my original posting, the comments while harsh, did help to bring some comedy to an otherwise trying situation. For the sake of privacy and respect for my ex-fiance, this will be the only update.
What do you think?
