S’porean asks if she overreacted when she asked her husband to change his all-black outfit before a big family CNY gathering

SINGAPORE: A woman got into an argument with her husband over what he intended to wear at a family gathering for Chinese New Year. Now she has asked on Reddit if she had overreacted, as her husband had got upset with her.

In a post on r/askSingapore on Thursday (Jan 30), u/dugongku wrote that her husband had been dressed in an oversized black T-shirt and black cargo pants, so she asked him not to wear an all-black ensemble to a CNY dinner thrown by her side of the family.

After all, red is the traditional colour for clothing at this time of year, as it symbolizes good fortune, luck, vitality, celebration, and prosperity. Moreover, wearing the vibrant colour is said to ward off evil spirits. Black and white, on the other hand, are considered unlucky to wear during CNY festivities as they are associated with mourning and death.

However, no one at the gathering was superstitious, said the woman. Still, she asked her partner not to wear all black because it would suggest that her husband, who rarely shows up for family gatherings, was “deliberately flouting CNY norms and doesn’t want to be there”.

As it turned out, he wasn’t in a good mood on the day of the gathering and wished to express this with the clothes he was wearing. His wife, however, says she believes that traditions still have meaning, and not wearing black is a relatively low-stakes tradition to follow. She asked other Reddit users to weigh in.

Many commenters on her post wrote that it’s likely that there are underlying issues to her husband’s mood and clothing choices, and the core issue may not be about the black clothes themselves.

“If your partner is using his choice of fashion to silently protest spending time with your extended family, you are focusing on the wrong thing,” one Reddit user opined.

The post author, who wrote that her husband did end up changing clothes, agreed that there are deeper issues in play. She admitted that her husband and her side of the family do not see eye to eye when it comes to certain values, although her family does not bring this up. She added that she and her husband were reflecting on the matter and would be discussing it later on. /TISG

Read also: Why Gen Zs not dress up for CNY? And what’s with the skimpy clothing and wearing black?