Respecting your partner also means respecting their things and their space. Just because you two share everything that doesn’t mean we can treat their things as if they were less valuable.
Redditor Xallia_Yevatell encountered this very issue with her wife. So she turned to the “Am I The A**hole” (AITA) subReddit for moral judgment.
She asked:
“WIBTA if I took my car keys away from my wife?”
The Original Poster (OP) explained:
“For context, my wife and I own two cars.”
“However, over the past few months she has exclusively driven just my car whenever it is available.”
“Now, in normal circumstances this would be fine since my car gets better gas mileage, but lately I’ve been feeling disrespected by the way she treats the car.”
“My car is nothing fancy. It’s a simple Ford Fiesta, but it’s still a space I like to keep in good condition and she doesn’t do that. Whenever she drives it there is new trash added to it. Typically fast food, but occasionally it’s other things.”
“She also allows the kids to eat in the back seat which I am strictly against. If I myself do not clean up after her then the mess will accumulate because she never cleans the car.”
“There’s also the fact that she never bothers to fill up the tank or even tell me it’s running low. This on occasion has caused me to be late to work because I have to stop to fill up before I can go anywhere.”
OP has tried to talk to her wife.
“I’ve talked to her multiple times about this problem and how it makes me feel and nothing has changed. The only solution I can think of at this point would be to take back the copy of the key she has to my car.”
“I feel like doing so would be considered abusive and don’t want that.”
“Especially considering she would still have her own vehicle to drive. There’s also the difference in money spent on gas, but I’m willing to eat that cost if it means preventing my car from ending up like hers.”
“Which, is so filled up with various bits of garbage that you can’t see the floorboards or even sit properly in the passenger seat.”
“So, WIBTA?”
OP added some edits.
“Edit: Did not expect this to get so many replies. I went to work and wasn’t able to respond to everything and since there are a lot of the same questions I feel it would be best to just post it here and hope that those who have asked said questions come back to read it.”
“First, my pronouns are she/her. Not really a big deal, but I felt I should address it going forward.”
“My wife has been diagnosed with ADHD and is currently on medication. A lot of people seem to be going back and forth on whether or not that matters, personally I think it can effect it, but the medication she’s taking should help with it, should it not? I will be doing more research into it as I thought I had an idea of what it entailed just by living with her, but it seems like I was very wrong.”
“We both have cosigned on both cars. So technically there is no ‘mine’ and ‘her’ car. That being said, I primarily pull in the money and foot all the expenses. She also insisted on the car we purchased for her for her own reasons.”
“My kids are ages 4 and 7.”
“The reason why I don’t simply take her car and use it is because her car is trashed and I refuse to clean it for her. Last time I did that as a courtesy and it took me well over an hour and five large trash bags. Doing this also feels like I am enabling her in a way.”
“I can not afford a professional cleaning on a regular basis, nor can I afford to buy a new car. The value of her car would not be worth trading in either.”
“I saw a few comments about how she might be exhausted taking care of the kids and the house etc. The mess with her extends into the house and is it’s own problem that I have yet to be able to effectively resolve.”
“I am primarily the one who does all the cleaning. We do our own laundry each. And she does the cooking for the most part. On occasion I will have to do it, but I don’t think cooking is hard at all so it’s often just an annoyance because I know that nothing will be reciprocated in the end.”
Redditors gave their opinions on the situation by declaring:
- NTA – Not The A**hole
- YTA – You’re The A**hole
- NAH – No A**holes Here
- ESH – Everyone Sucks Here
Redditors agreed OP was not the a**hole.
“NTA but you need to be honest about what you’re doing and why. It’s not okay to trash someone else’s car, even your spouse’s car. It’s definitely not okay to use someone’s car and leave it empty.” ~ Radiant_Cat618
“NTA- It’s reasonable to not want your car treated like a garbage bin. If she doesn’t want to respect it, she shouldn’t have access to it until she can. Could you clean her car or have her car detailed?” ~ Fluffy-Velociraptor
“Last time I cleaned her car it took me over an hour to do so. (Might have been two hours. I can’t remember) It was also in the heat of Las Vegas. I came came out of that shit storm with five fully loaded trash bags. I’m never doing that again.” ~ Xallia_Yevatell
“I don’t blame you. I would take your keys as she is likely using your car as its kept clean while hers is a landfill on wheels.” ~ Fluffy-Velociraptor
“ADHD isn’t an excuse to leave someone’s car a mess over and over. She can leave herself a reminder to pick up.” ~ rustblooms
“Yeah maybe, but if they don’t happen to remember they ever even wrote a reminder somewhere to look at it or after the reminder goes off on their phone they get distracted by something else then that’s not going to help. That’s just the distractibility part, then you have procrastination which can be crippling.”
“For three days I would open up my CV file, stare at it for 20 minutes, my brain just not wanting to go there, it seemed near impossible, then I found out the job had been taken. It’s not quite as simple as ‘leave a reminder’ it’s like saying to a person with insomnia ‘just turn everything off at night’ it’s a step but not always the solution.” ~ Ahblahright
OP has every right to want to keep her car clean.