If you asked a room full of boob-havers to say what is the number one best feeling in the world, 100% of them would tell you it’s taking off your bra the second you get home at the end of a long day. So imagine if you couldn't yank off your bra and get comfortable when you finally you walk into the house? That’s the absolute bra nightmare that one woman is living in, after her husband told her she needed to keep her puppies wrangled while her stepson lives with them.
The problem started when her “young adult” stepson recently moved in.
He’s a pretty easy person to live with, but there’s one habit that she’s reluctant to break since he’s moved back in.
“I do not like to wear bras when I’m in my own home,” she shared in a letter to the Care and Feeding advice column. “But I also don’t feel comfortable walking around without a bra in front of him.”
Her husband thought it was a problem too.
He makes a “big deal” about the Letter Writer (LW) wearing a bra while her stepson is home.
“Last night after showering, I tried out coming into the living room wearing a long frumpy bathrobe that covered up my breasts, and in my opinion, I was merely comfortable, not over-sexualizing my triple-D’s in front of my son,” she explained. “My husband didn’t say anything at first as we cuddled on the couch watching TV, but when stepson came home from work, my husband sent me to our room to change.”
In the LW’s eyes, her stepson didn’t care one bit.
He went off to play video games without giving the couple a second thought. But her husband still insisted that the LW’s change, from “just the thought of being in the same house with his son upstairs.”
“I felt he ruined our snuggle time by controlling what I wear, and instead of changing, I just left and went to bed,” she recalled.
Her husband disagreed with her decision to leave. He asks so little of her — couldn’t she just do this one teeny thing?
“I told him he just doesn’t know what it’s like to wear bras.”
She admitted that if she’d changed, there wouldn’t be a problem now, but in the end, “I want to feel comfortable in my own home.”
“I don’t feel comfortable nipping out or wearing certain shirts braless around my stepson either. But there has to be a happy medium where I can be comfortable,” she explained.
“What do women wear at home when they live with young men who are not their husbands?” she asked.
Some people thought her husband was going overboard with this whole bra thing.
“How about this? Every time your husband wants you to put on a bra tell him you'll do so if he puts on a jock strap,” one commenter wrote. “Your breasts aren't out in your stepson's face. You aren't wearing low cut tops and turning up the AC to get attention. So anyone who has a problem with the fact that you're big-chested needs to just deal with it. If your husband doesn't get the picture with the jock strap comment simply tell him ‘No, thanks, I'm much more comfortable sitting in my own home without my bra on.’"
Someone else agreed. “Frankly, if my husband ‘sent me upstairs to change,’ I’d tell him to go eff himself. He isn’t my mother and I am not a child. LW should be cognizant of what [she] is wearing when she is braless, no tight t-shirts or see through items, but otherwise live her life. If her husband doesn’t like it, then tell him the stepson can find another place to live because she will be comfortable in her own home and she’ll wear a bra when he wears one.”
“Sorry. When I am in my own home I am in charge of what I wear,” added a third commenter. “Personally, I wear a bra now that my boobs are ginormous because I don't like not having support, but for years I went braless. And if my husband had told me to wear a bra I would have handed him one and told him he is welcome to wear one whenever he wants.
“It is absurd that the LW's kindness in letting her stepson live with them is being rewarded with restrictions on her,” the person continued. “Her stepson can learn the fine art of averting his eyes. It's not her job to save him from her boobs.”
A few people made suggestions to keep her ta-tas covered.
“For the woman with a stepson. Would you consider throwing on a t-shirt under your robe a reasonable compromise?” one commenter asked. “More coverage and less chance of a revealing slip-up without discomfort of a bra. I tend toward structure-less camisoles myself but that may not be an option for the more endowed.”
A second person wrote that she couldn’t even imagine the LW’s problem.
“I'm pretty busty myself, and I have to say I can't imagine not wearing a bra all day long, even around the house. THEY'RE HEAVY!” the woman wrote. “I find the support to be very helpful, not to mention that I'd prefer not to have them banging on my knees in another decade.”
The final verdict came down to columnist Jamilah Lemieux, who saw no gross misconduct on the part of the LW.
“What people who do not have breasts, particularly large ones, do not easily understand is just how restrictive, uncomfortable, and absolutely burdensome bras can be,” she wrote.
It’s neither her husband’s nor her stepson’s fault that “our society has this super weird and unhealthy relationship to breasts,” she continued.
The columnist said that it's fine if the LW wants to change if it’s for her own comfort or if she wants to be considerate of her husband’s feelings “but he should not make you feel like this is something that you have to do.”
The compromise might be a T-shirt or a wire-free bra that is comfortable to be in all day.
“You will be covered up more often than not, and when you do need to free the nip for a second, these two grown-a– men can deal with it — and the one who doesn’t share a bed with you can also find a place of his own if this is such an issue, which it totally doesn’t seem to be,” Lemieux added.
If her husband gives her any pushback, “I think you should ask him to try on one of your bras so he can see just how GARBAGE it is to have wire and elastic and tight fabric stretched across your body for 18 hours out of the day.”
