Patricia Grisafi
In a household, usually, chores get divvied up. Someone takes meal preparation, someone else takes cleaning, and so forth.
Sometimes, things don’t happen the way you wish they would — a person doesn’t make the meal the way you want or the cleaning isn’t nearly as good as you would like.
Does that mean a person is lazy or that you have different standards?
On Reddit, a husband is mad because his wife seems to think it’s okay to put less effort into meal preparation. Is he right to be upset at plain spaghetti? Or is there something else going on?
“I (husband) usually make all the meals in the household. I told my wife I was going to make dinner tonight, but she said she was planning to – ok, that’s fine. So, I go back to work on my laptop. She comes into the room and I ask her what she’s making and she says leftover roast chicken and spaghetti,” the OP writes.
“Me: Oh, you’re going to make it with sauce?”
“Her: No, she says just plain spaghetti.”
“Me: Ok, so, why wouldn’t you make some sauce for it? No one eats just plain spaghetti.”
“Her: Sure you can, just eat it. What’s wrong with eating plain spaghetti?”
“I told her to do whatever, but I wouldn’t serve her just plain spaghetti noodles. So, I know it seems like maybe a dumb thing to get upset about, but she insisted on making dinner. By making dinner, she intended to warm up the roast chicken, which we got from Costco, and warm up the noodles, which were actually leftover when I made us chicken carbonara.”
“I was further frustrated because a few days ago she agreed to make dinner while I spent the afternoon and early evening cleaning out the garage. The task wouldn’t have allowed me time to prepare dinner. I entered the house tired and extremely hungry. It turns out she made food for herself and the kids, but she had planned for me to eat the leftover spaghetti (with sauce and chicken) I had made the day before. It was still in the fridge and in the container, and I opened it to heat it up, and there was like barely any pasta in there for a kids’ meal, which meant I had to now prepare dinner for myself when I was already tired and hungry. She said she thought there had been more in the container,” the OP adds.
“I did get upset and told her I wouldn’t serve her plain noodles, because when I make meals for her, I try my best to make something she’d like to eat – all the time, because I take pride in that. I told her it was insulting because it’s like telling someone you’ll make them pizza, but just serve them the crust. I dunno … that’s not pizza, is it? I tried to have her see she wouldn’t serve her own sister plain spaghetti, but she insisted she would and have no problem with that. I honestly don’t believe that. I told her that would be embarrassing. I can’t tell whether she is being serious that she believes it’s acceptable to serve people plain spaghetti, or she’s digging in her heels because she won’t admit she was just being lazy.”
What do Redditors think?
“NTA and I’m surprised so many people think OP is TA…did no one else read the part about how she also agreed to cook dinner while he cleaned the garage, then proceeds to cook herself and the kids dinner and leave him with less than a serve of leftovers? Anyway, if he makes an effort to regularly cook decent meals for her, I’d be pissed too if my partner presented me with plain f*cking noodles and called it dinner,” said pigeoncatdog.
“There’s more to this than this meal. You feel like you pull more weight than her in the relationship. It’s impossible for us to know based on this spaghetti-specific post whether that’s true,” observed catzrob89.
“NTA. Your wife didn’t make a meal, she boiled some noodles. Sounds like your wife has a bad case of learned incompetence. She must be absolutely desperate to never make dinner again,” noted frogger_mcdogger.
“NTA. It sounds like there may be other issues,” said kab200.
“Yeah this sounds like a backhanded punishment for something she’s not communicating. NTA at all. I would honestly cry if my partner did this to me lol,” said Spaceman_fan.
Somewhat related:
- Man Asks AITA For Telling His Date He Wasn’t Going To Pay For Her Meal
- Man Asks ‘AITA’ For Demanding Pregnant Wife Apologize Because She Refused To Host His Big Family For Christmas
- Woman Asks AITA For Refusing To Change Her Last Name After Divorce
- Woman Asks “AITA” For Keeping Baby’s Name After SIL Steals It For Her Own Kid
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