Chances are, you and your domestic partner aren’t always going to take up the same hobbies.
Most couples don’t give this much thought, happily partaking in their new or longstanding hobbies while their partners enjoy theirs.
The only time a partner’s hobby could prove to be an issue is when they chose to bring it home with them.
This makes it challenging not only for their partner to enjoy their hobbies but also to fulfill their daily routines.
The wife of Redditor Icy-Shelter9897 had recently taken up a rather unusual hobby, which made routine kitchen visits surprisingly challenging.
After the original poster (OP)’s wife continued to express frustration whenever he disrupted or damaged her work, the OP finally snapped, even going so far as to call his wife’s newfound hobby “stupid.”
While visits to the kitchen quickly became much easier, the OP’s relationship with his wife became more distant.
Having doubts about his behavior, the OP took to the subReddit “Am I The A**hole” (AITA), where he asked fellow Redditors:
“AITA for telling my wife I hate her fridgescaping?”
The OP explained how his honest opinion of his wife’s “fridgescaping” seemed to get him in hot water:
“Recently my wife has taken to ‘fridgescaping’.”
“I guess it’s a recent trend because I’d never heard about it before this.”
“She started decorating our fridge and it was really getting on my nerves, for example she put flowers in the fridge, in vases, in front of food so you have to move things just to get to the food.”
“She put all our food in fancy baskets, jars, and similar things. I know it sounds absurd, but if you just search up ‘fridgescaping,’ you’ll see what I’m talking about.”
“I didn’t care at first because I don’t have to use the fridge much anyways, I don’t cook a lot.”
“But she’s getting too meticulous with it and adding too much decor.”
“It’s made the fridge very uninviting for me.”
“She gets upset when I get something from the fridge and don’t put things back perfectly.”
“She keeps taking it as a personal slight and acts like I’ve done something to deliberately hurt her, when I haven’t, I just find it unnecessary to maintain such an organized fridge.”
“Before she started this, it would take me 30 seconds to grab something quick from the fridge, whereas now it’s a whole ordeal.”
“Last weekend she confronted me after I grabbed some leftovers from the fridge and left it in ‘disarray’ according to her.”
“I explained how I find the hobby stupid and she can decorate other things, it doesn’t have to be the fridge.”
“It gets in the way when I want to quickly eat, when I come home from work hungry and tired and want to grab a quick bite it’s frustrating.”
“I also talked to my son about it, and he finds it annoying, which I told her.”
“She didn’t argue back after that, and she’s removed all of the decorations from the fridge, which I have to admit has been relieving.”
“But she’s also been acting very distant towards me and just hasn’t been herself and has been weird intimacy-wise.”
“AITAH for this?”
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
- ESH: Everybody Sucks Here
- NAH: No A**holes Here
While the Reddit community was somewhat divided, they generally agreed that the OP might have been the a**hole for calling his wife’s fridgescaping “stupid.”
Some felt that while the OP could have chosen his words a bit more carefully, they otherwise agreed that his wife needed to understand that her hobby was making life more difficult for everyone else in the house:
“NTA.”
“I mean, was it nice to call something she put time and effort into stupid?”
“Probably not.”
“My move would have been to call it impractical, especially as it’s a communally used appliance and not fully in her control.”
“Having a fridge that is practical to use is important, and chances are, most of these content creators don’t actually leave their fridge ‘fridgescaped’ as it’s just not functional.”
“Maybe you can apologize for the stupid comment and then ask her if there’s somewhere else in the home she’d like to decorate solely to her liking.”
“I do think people need to consider how rude it is to call things other people might find a spark of joy or fun in ‘stupid’ or ‘dumb.'”
“All too often people, women in particular, are called stupid for liking…basically anything.”
“Taylor Swift is dumb, the Barbie movie was dumb, Bravo shows are dumb, Stanley cups are dumb, Starbucks is a waste and so on and so forth.”
“Would I decorate the interior of my fridge?”
“Probably not.”
“But if it was something OP’s wife found a bit of fun in, then who cares.”
“It literally harms no one.”
“And OP’s wife lives in a house with two guys who probably dominate a lot of the household with their wants and interests.”- coastalkid92
“NTA.”
“If it makes someone happy to store food in attractive containers and neatly organize the fridge, that would be one thing.”
“But adding crap like flowers, framed pictures, and assorted tchotchkes (that make it difficult to use the fridge for its intended purpose) is just plain ridiculous.”- WelfordNelferd
Others felt that the OP needed to express his frustrations to his wife, he did it in the most undiplomatic way possible, and they both could have worked together to come up with a solution that pleased both of them:
“NAH.”
“its reasonable to not want too much decor in the fridge, or to not be scolded if you don’t put things back perfectly.”
“But you did totally belittle something that brought your wife joy and made her feel creative, not surprised she’s been distant.”
“Most people don’t like it when you sh*t on their interests, and most people like it even less when it’s a spouse.”
“I’m nicer to my friends about their interests that I don’t like than you are to your literal wife.”
“Not understanding that it might make her distant is completely clueless of you tbh.”- Hareikan
Most, however, simply couldn’t abide the way the OP handled this, agreeing that he owed his wife a huge apology, with some even feeling that the OP’s response suggested he doesn’t help out nearly enough with food and cooking around the house:
“You know most of these am I the a**hole posts come down to communication.”
“It’s hardly ever the situation.”
“You’re not the a**hole for not wanting your fridge scaped.”
“But you’re the a-hole for how you talk to people.”
“There’s so many better ways you could have approached it and you approached it out of anger and annoyance and belittled your wife and made her feel it was you and your son against her.”
“To her, this was a fun little hobby that felt fulfilling to her, and you essentially told her that the thing that brought her happiness is stupid and annoying and to stop.”
“You could have said it looks wonderful, but it’s a bit inconvenient, and maybe she could have put her efforts somewhere else, like the laundry room because, as much as you enjoy the aesthetic, the fridge didn’t seem the best place to showcase her efforts.”
“BE NICE TO PEOPLE YOU LOVE!”
“Why does that seem so feckin hard?”
“Why don’t people do that more often?”
“And the audacity to wonder why she doesn’t want to be intimate afterwards.”
“I only shat all over her hobby. Why is she not taking all of her clothes off?”
“Be nice to your wife.”
“Apologize and say it THE RIGHT WAY; there’s always a right and wrong way to communicate with someone you love.”
“Right now, YTA. Not because of the situation.”
“But because you treat your wife like she’s less.”
“Be better.”- TouringPotato
“People seem to think that because your wife’s hobby is stupid that makes it all right to be a d*ck to her.”
“It does not.”
“There are ways to communicate your dissatisfaction without telling her something she did was stupid.”
“That’s what your wife is upset about.”
“Not that you didn’t like it, but because of the way you told her.”
“And for bringing your son into it.”
“YTA.”- Agreeable_Error261
“YTA.”
“Not because fridgescaping doesn’t sound annoying as hell, but because you apparently contribute so little to the food of the household that it took you quite a bit to start to care about something this impractical.”
“What grown adult ‘doesn’t use the fridge much anyways’?”
“If you’re leaving almost all the kitchen operations to your wife, except apparently grabbing leftovers sometimes, the fridge is her domain.”
“And the fact that when she treated it as her domain and tried to get some joy out of the monotonous slog that is cooking every single meal, you said ‘this is stupid’ instead of ‘can we share the kitchen responsibilities and therefore space and decisions more evenly?”
“Makes you the AH.”- MaddogOfLesbos
It’s not unreasonable for someone to get that grabbing a snack or drink from the fridge should take longer than five seconds.
However, since the reason that this was the case for the OP was owing to a project his wife took great pride in, he should have planned to address this with a bit more sensitivity and tact.
Seeing as he seems more concerned with the unpleasant change of intimacy and not his wife’s hurt feelings, it seems sensitivity and tact might be two things the OP needs to improve.