After a long day at work, the last thing anyone really wants to do is cook.
With this in mind, there’s little more comforting or satisfying than coming home to discover our spouse or partner has cooked for us, and dinner is waiting for us on the table.
However, this being an expectation is an antiquated belief, to say the least, as no one should expect this unless they’ve been told so.
The wife of Redditor NoMarkerMadness once came home after a long day at work.
After arriving home, discovering she would have to cook dinner, the original poster (OP)’s wife confronted him about why this was the case.
After giving his honest response, the OP’s wife still wasn’t pleased.
Still confused by the whole situation, the OP took to the subReddit “Am I The A**hole” (AITA), where he asked fellow Redditors:
“AITA- My wife came home upset because she was hungry and I didn’t have a meal prepared?”
The OP explained why he neglected to have dinner ready on the table for his wife when she came home from work:
“Backstory: I (32 M[ale]) have been married to my wife (31 F[emale]) for 5 years.”
“My wife has always made the meals and I have always cleaned up for the most part.”
“I have tried to cook for her before, but she just rejects it and tells me she doesn’t like it.”
“She keeps bringing up that I put cinnamon in scrambled eggs once, which I definitely do not remember doing, but she 100% believes I did that so I am not going to argue with her over it.”
“I work one 8 hour shift and two 16 hour shifts on Friday Saturday and Sunday respectively.”
“She works a retail job and is there 5x a week with a varying schedule.”
“She usually cleans up dishes on the weekend because I am not home to do them and I have gotten upset in the past coming home Monday to a large amount of dishes from over the weekend.”
“So what happened tonight was I was off today and relaxing while I waited for her to get off.”
“In my head she was going to get home, maybe cook, and we’d hit the gym.”
“Instead she called me and asked me to start cutting up steaks for Mongolian beef.”
“So I do that and she walks in the door and tells me ‘your parked like an a**hole.”
“You couldn’t leave me any room, I could barely get out’.”
“I ask her why she is so upset and she said ‘I am so hungry and I have to cook a whole a** meal after working all day’.”
“I respond ‘You woulda had to do that anyway and I would make it for you, but you hate my cooking and wont eat it anyway’.”
“She responds ‘You don’t even f*cking try’.”
“So I went upstairs and started making this post, hoping to just give her some space to calm down.”
“She came up crying a little bit ago.”
“In my head, it feels like she thinks I am weaponizing incompetence.”
“In my own world, that’s not it.”
“I know how to cook, but I’m not joking.”
“Every time I have made something, she didn’t want any of it and made her own stuff.”
“I know she wants a hot meal after work, but I am just here thinking I was being respectful by listening to her when she says she doesn’t want my cooking, when now she wants me to have food prepared.”
“I get 5 hours of sleep both mornings that I have to get up for work, Saturday and Sunday, if that, and I feel horrible on those days.”
“I get no time to myself on those weekend work days and can never attend any weekend social events.”
“By the time Sunday night quitting time rolls around, I am dead.”
“I’m responsible for all the housework during the week, minus the cooking.”
“I also deliver groceries whenever I run out of things to do at home, but this is on a ‘if I feel like it’ kind of basis, I drive for Spark.”
“She gets to go home after work every night and sleep a full 8-9 hours.”
“She doesn’t really have to do many chores besides cooking.”
“Yes, I do all the chores except cooking.”
“Every single one by myself.”
“Very few exceptions.”
“Her doing her own dishes on the weekend is one.”
“When guests are coming or we have a party is the other.”
“I’m so confused.”
“Am I the a**hole?”
Fellow Redditors weighed in on where they believed the OP fell in this particular situation, by declaring:
- NTA – Not The A**hole
- YTA – You’re The A**hole
- NAH – No A**holes Here
- ESH – Everyone Sucks Here
The Reddit community, for the most part, agreed that the OP was not the a**hole for not cooking dinner for his wife.
Just about everyone felt that since the OP’s wife had openly expressed her dislike of his cooking, she shouldn’t have expected him to cook, but that her unhappiness likely had little to do with her cooking, there were likely other issues at hand:
“NTA.”
“Based on the above, but I have a feeling this is about more than just dinner.”
“Gently ask if she’s okay in general?”
“Maybe something happened that she hasn’t communicated.”- IFeelNothingness
“NTA.”
“It sounds like she just had a really crappy day and needs a break from cooking for a night, but in the moment didn’t say what she needed to say.”- Witty-Cat1996
Others, however, were a bit more sympathetic to the OP’s wife, even if they still didn’t think the OP did anything wrong either.
“NAH.”
“I won’t discount the intensity of working 40 hours in 3 days, but you then get four days off.”
“She’s working 5 days a week in retail – if you’ve never worked retail, you can’t imagine the physical, mental, and emotional toll it can take on a person.”
“It sounds like she had a bad day and was burnt out, and you did everything right in the moment that you could to support her.”
“It also sounds like you need to maybe sit down together on a day neither of you is working to talk through your meal planning, your chores schedule, and maybe scheduling one night a week where you cook together.”
“If she doesn’t like your cooking and you insist it isn’t weaponized incompetence, either she’s deeply insecure/reluctant to eat your food for some reason she isn’t saying, or you’re actually that bad that your food isn’t edible.”
“Either way, cooking needs to stop being a chore for your wife, and you need to figure out ways to batch prepare bulk meals that you can throw in the oven to have ready for her when she gets home, or recipes she’s written down that you can follow very closely.”
“Additionally, taking a cooking class together, or finding a new recipe to cook together once a week, will shift the burden of cooking from feeling like a chore into more of an indulgence to enjoy together, and you’ll learn from her cooking methods while practicing alongside her.”
“She’ll gain trust in your cooking abilities, you’ll learn new recipes together, and eventually she may feel more comfortable sharing the cooking responsibility.”– redlips_rosycheeks
While some had trouble sympathizing with either the OP or his wife, feeling that neither of them treated each other as they deserved to be treated:
“ESH.”
“You both talk to each other like real jerks.”
“And you’d think that after 5 years of marriage, you would have figured out a couple of things that you can actually cook and she’d be willing to trust you enough to eat what you cook, but both of you seem committed to being passive-aggressive and playing the victim when the other freaks out.”
“Do you even like each other?”
“Because you’re not treating each other like you do.”
“Go to therapy or get a divorce because this nonsense is not going to fix itself.”-MoreCleverUserName
“Hard to determine without knowing more.”
“If you cook and actually add cinnamon to your eggs, that’s def weird.”
“She says ‘you don’t even try’, we need to know how true that is.”
“What have you cooked, and what does she not like about it?”
“I love my fiancées cooking, but I 100% realize that it’s mainly reheating canned food and shit like that.”
“I’m leaning ESH or NAH.”- evantom34
The OP later returned with an update, sharing how things eventually unfurled with his wife:
“She came upstairs and covered her head, and anytime I tried to ask her if she wanted me to get her anything to eat, she said no and that she would have sleep for dinner.”
“I suggested takeout and listed places I knew she liked until she stopped saying no and said ‘I don’t know’.”
“So now I am here at a chicken place picking up her go-to meal.”
“At this particular place.”
“We talked, she was upset specifically because I ate at 5 pm without her.”
“She wanted me to think of her and bring her something and eat with her, even if it was some takeout or snacks.”
It somewhat seems that the OP’s wife wants it both ways, wanting to be catered to but not wanting the OP’s cooking.
Leaving one to agree with others that there is something more going on here that hasn’t been addressed.
Hopefully, the discussion the OP had with his wife over chicken could at least begin to address some of the problems.