Man Throws Away Girlfriend’s Keepsake Umbilical Cord and Doesn’t Understand Why She’s Mad

Imagine coming home to find your partner has thrown away a special memento you’ve been saving. And to make matters worse he can’t understand what the big deal is!

This is exactly the situation one man found himself in after unwittingly throwing away a pouch which contained something very special belonging to his long term girlfriend. Here’s what he wrote on Reddit:

Hi, my (34M) gf (21F) of two years is native American and she had this small, beaten up leather pouch. It was about the size of a golf ball, and it was beaded but there were beads missing and thread exposed and the leather was stained and greasy with something.

Imagine my horror when I asked her what the thing was, and she told me it was her umbilical cord? It grossed me out and I thought she was joking,
so l laughed. She told me it was her people’s cultural practice to stop you from searching for things or something among other things.

I couldn’t take it anymore, so I hid the thing in a box in the basement. So yesterday, I decided to rid us of it and put it in the trash.

But today her mum called, and told her that she was willing to remake the pouch for her if she sent it.

She proceeded to tear apart our room looking for it, sobbing hysterically and not listening to any kind of
reason.

I came clean and told her that I threw it away because I thought she wouldn’t notice. She started screaming at me and said that it wasn’t my right to throw her things away.

I reminded her of when she threw my favourite shirt away just because it had a hole and a grease stain. She told me it wasn’t the same thing, but isn’t it?

She was suddenly calm, and I thought she was willing to talk about it, but she started packing her stuff. I begged her to stay but she took her car and her stuff and left.

It was such a small and dumb thing to split us up over, but I do regret it.

Just because something is cultural doesn’t mean that justifies it. Would it be okay if I kept all my fecal matter in a little bag because I thought
it was special?

I’ve been calling her and calling her and she won’t answer. Just want to apologise and get her back.

They managed to find the pouch, and I’ll have to pay a huge recovery fee, but that’s all worth it. They agreed to let
me pick it up tomorrow. She told me she was coming back and I felt butterflies again like when I first met her. I was waiting for her to show up, and I wanted to fully check the condition of the pouch, so I opened it and discovered the umbilical cord.

She told me not to contact her again or she’d send her brothers to me… I won’t be an asshole and get the police involved, but that was definitely a threat.

I went to our room, and she threw what looks like porcupine quills or something everywhere. She stabbed them into my side of the bed, put them in my shoes, in my dresser drawers.

Wow! That escalated really quickly! What were the quills all about? Some sort of voodoo?? The poster shared his story to try and understand if what he did was so bad. Here’s what some commenters had to say: 

She’s not coming back. You’re an intentionally culturally insensitive asshole. She explained why and how it was important to her, and you threw it away. It is completely irreplaceable, and not remotely like a shirt. I don’t understand how that’s not obvious. It has spiritual and cultural meaning, to compare it to an old shirt just proves how insensitive you’re being. I almost guarantee she’s ghosting your ass, as you deserve.

I’m indigenous, my tribe is Hunkpati Dakota, and our people save the umbilical cord too. We put them in beaded pouches and keep them OUR WHOLE LIVES and they’re supposed to be buried with us. They’re extremely important, and often times the pouch is made and beaded painstakingly by the person’s mother. You had no right to throw it away. Why was putting it in the basement not enough for you? Why wouldn’t you have told her you didn’t like it and/or asked her to put it someplace else or in something else? You’re definitely the asshole.

A biiiig giant asshole. Comparing a shirt to an irreplaceable, hugely significant, cultural keepsake that she’s had literally her entire life is… reprehensible. It’s disgusting.

Well, I guess that’s that then!

Images: Pixabay