Woman Says She Will No Longer Cook for Picky Husband After 12 Years of Marriage: ‘He Was Not Happy About This at All’
“I also pay all the bills, manage the household, take care of the dogs, do the laundry, clean the house and work my own jobs,” she wrote on Reddit
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A couple arguing (stock image)An “exhausted” wife — whose dad also recently “died slowly and brutally” due to illness — has put her foot down against her picky husband.
The 42-year-old woman turned to Reddit’s “Am I the A------?” forum on Jan. 8 to describe the “emotional food-centered loop” she’s in and ask if she’s in the wrong for telling her 48-year-old husband to cook for himself.
“I feel like a miserable failure of a wife. But I am drowning,” the woman wrote, adding that she was also her late dad’s primary caretaker and now is her mom’s caretaker. “I had to put some sort of boundary down so that I could protect and nourish myself in this hard time.”
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A couple fighting (stock image)The woman noted that while her husband, whom she started dating 15 years ago and married 12 years ago, is “extremely successful in his career,” he “struggles with day-to-day functioning.”
“We both work full time, no kids,” she said. “I also pay all the bills, manage the household, take care of the dogs, do the laundry, clean the house and work my own jobs. I am an academic and work at two schools.”
The busy wife then detailed the “emotional food-centered loop” she’s in.
“He has a lot of dietary restrictions and over the years I was happy to work around those — mostly we now eat homemade salad and baked chicken, in various forms,” she continued. “Unfortunately, this resulted in a situation where I do ALL the cooking. Any attempts to cook for me have lasted about one night before he is overwhelmed and frazzled and so I just go back to cooking as it’s what I have always done.”
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A woman cooking (stock image)She then described what she called “the problem.”
“Over the last five years, my husband has been sick with various ailments, starting with atypical long covid, and then this year accelerating into an allergy to wood dust, intolerance to edibles, allergy to a paint I used on the kitchen cabinets, a reaction to our gas stove, and now (and this is the problem) an inability to tolerate chicken being baked in a tiny electric toaster oven as I'm not allowed to use gas anymore,” she revealed.
“He will not eat other meats or pasta. I cannot use the stovetop as [it] causes oil to splatter and it bothers him.” she added. “He has pursued no medical solution aside from an inhaler from his PCP [primary care provider]. His symptoms are mysterious and variable. He has not seen an allergist or rheumatologist in spite of my pleading.”
Amid these ongoing cooking issues, she was trying to care for her parents.
“In the middle of all of this, I was the primary caretaker for my father, who died slowly and brutally. He died in my arms on 12/21/24 after 10 months of illness, during which time I became his medical and financial power of attorney,” she wrote. “He died hardly more than two weeks ago. For those of you that know, you know. For those of you that do not know, I don’t want you to know. I am now the primary caretaker for my mother.”
The wife, who feels “traumatized” by the death, then laid out her feelings.
“Since the death, my husband's health issues about me cooking have arisen and have become the focal point of a tremendous amount of friction in our marriage and home life,” she said. “I know I am not helping; I am exhausted, I am traumatized by the death, I am lost ...”
“I am angry at not being able to cook in my own home unless I break my work day to do so, so that the chicken offgassing has passed by the time he returns home from work,” she continued. “And even then it causes so much stress, which compounds my desperate sadness. It seems silly to grieve the loss of the ability to cook as I did, but I do.”
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A man trying to cook (stock image)The woman then told her husband that “he can cook and shop for himself,” while she “will cook and shop for myself and the dogs.”
“He was not happy about this at all,” she revealed, before asking the forum “AITA [am I the a-------] for no longer wanting to cook in this impossible environment?”
One person quickly responded: “NTA [not the a-------]. From what it looks like, this marriage is a one way street. He can’t even cook for you nor himself because he gets overwhelmed? Does he seek help to help him to function better as an adult? As I see it, you’re a full time maid with a full time job and other responsibilities.”
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Many Redditors agreed: “You are not the miserable failure. He is! What does he contribute to your health and happiness? It sounds like his expectation of your partnership is that you give and he takes. F that. NTA.”
After reading the responses, the woman thanked everyone.
“You have made such a difference," she wrote. "I am reading and processing all you’re saying and will reply to everything.”
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