This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/tifu by /u/maryfcat on 2026-01-24 01:15:06+00:00.
Gang, it's rough out here.
I'm in my (28F) fifth year of my PhD program, and will be graduating in the summer. My advisor (45?M) and I have grown fairly close during this time; we have similar senses of humor and work very well together. There is still a level of professional distance obviously, but we trust each other and I anticipate that we will be good friends after I graduate.
He is married and has a kid, and I have met his wife several times now at events or over for dinner at their house (both she and his daughter are lovely, and I get along with them really well). I.e., from what I can tell, he is in fact actually married, even though I haven't ever really seen him wearing his wedding ring either at work or at home. Today I was meeting with him when he mentioned his wife in passing, and for some reason my brain decided it was a good idea to blurt out, "speaking of [wife's name], why don't you ever wear your wedding ring? I've noticed some other professors do that -- is that like, a professor thing?"
As soon as it left my mouth, I realized just how rude/invasive/thoughtless of a question it was. Our relationship is very casual, so I think my filter was just completely off, but I felt horrible the second I asked. He kinda just looked at his hand for a second, and then said, "That's.... a very personal question."
I think I can count on one hand the number of times I have seen him serious like that. I apologized profusely and our meeting ended pretty much immediately. I messaged him to apologize again for overstepping boundaries, and he assured me it was alright, but I've been feeling physically ill about it all day. I'm not sure what possessed me to ask that (an extremely inappropriate question that's basically a landmine for potentially bad answers?), and even though he said it was alright, I've been basically shaking since then, I'm just so anxious about the whole thing.
TL;DR: I stupidly asked my wonderful (married(?)) PhD advisor why he doesn't wear a wedding ring, he obviously reacted weirdly, I apologized, he said it was fine. I've spent the last three hours trying not to throw up from anxiety.