AITAH – Took wrong food container for lunch?
A Redditor (38F) found herself in an unexpected debate with her husband (39M) over a container mix-up from the previous night’s dinner. They’re both working on food portioning and intermittent fasting, and it’s their routine to pack dinner as lunch for the next day.
Thinking it wasn’t a big deal, she took the smaller portion, as usual, but left behind uneaten cooked carrots. Her husband discovered the leftover carrots, got frustrated, and felt she should have respected the specific portions he’d packed.
Now, she’s wondering if she was inconsiderate or if the whole thing just highlights their ongoing communication issues. Read on for the full story and to weigh in!
‘ AITAH – Took wrong food container for lunch?’
I (38F) just got a very strong “talking to” from my husband (39 M) that has gone on for way too long for taking the “wrong” container of dinner from the night before for lunch yesterday. He demanded to review what I wrote prior to posting.
His response to reading the following is “Your response is, I’m not sorry you should’ve done even more than you already did to ensure I wouldn’t waste carrots that were meant for you. Which will make YTA”. This is so silly and embarrassing that I almost hope no one reads this.. What happened…
The night before last, my husband made chicken and dumplings for the family. We are both trying to be better with our food consumption and are intermittent fasting. Our dinner = lunch for the next day. He wants me to be very clear that these are NOT leftovers.
Yesterday, getting ready to leave for work and packing my lunch, I sent him a text confirming the smaller container was mine. His reply was “no” and in response I told him “I don’t need that much”. The container of food he packed for me was way more than I could eat and I knew it would be wasted.
His response back “you will need it” and that he was “going to eating something else for lunch”. Rushing, I take the container with less because it seemingly didn’t matter because he had other plans for lunch.
I go to work, heat up my food and I don’t finish it all. I don’t particularly like cooked carrots and there were so many so that was what was mostly left behind. I come home yesterday evening and nothing was brought up about the container switch.
THIS is my fault! I forgot to empty my lunch bag yesterday when I came home. This morning when he sees my lunch bag, he opens it and sees my container from the day before. He is highly upset that I didn’t finish it and that there were so many carrots left that he could have eaten. We get into an argument about it.
We were in the same room while he was packing them and nothing was said about him packing the lunches a specific way. I always take the lesser full container. This scenario seemed no different than any other scenario.. How I ended up here…
He told me that I should take this to Reddit and if I do, that I would “get eaten up”. That this is insane that I don’t understand that he shouldn’t have to waste his time to communicate with me because he cooked and packed the lunch. I should just take it. He shouldn’t have to put more effort in than he already does.
We have always struggled with communication and I just feel that it would have been simple enough for him to just say “hey, I packed our lunches a certain way. Yours has more but mine has more carrots in it. I also wanted less bread/dumplings”.
I am very appreciative that he cooked for the family and even offered to help prepare it. I don’t appreciate getting “talked at” like I’m a child that needs a scolding. If he talks about one more g**damn carrot, I’m serving him papers (not really). Am I really the a**hole here? If I am, I have to profusely apologize to him.
Here’s the feedback from the Reddit community:
Vindicare605 − ESH: You both need to work on your communication with each other. He doesn’t need to be making such a big deal out of this, but you need to not be so dismissive of him when he makes it clear to you that he finds something important enough to be worth clarifying to you no matter how trivial it might seem to you.
This started as a dumb argument because it looks like he really wanted to eat Carrots and you deprived him of that, but the bigger deal here is that he feels like you deliberately ignored him after he spent what he considers a great deal of effort asking you to not do something really small that you could have easily just complied with because he asked you to. Both of you are being immature about this for different reasons.
mewley − Your husband sounds insanely controlling, down to insisting he gets to read what you post here. Please get some solo counseling.
soulmatesmate − ESH, especially hubby. For the sake of your marriage, get color coded container lids or post-it notes. I have stacking drink glasses in red, white and blue. I use red, my wife blue. White is for not us or a special “right now, then the sink” drink, like my OJ and powdered medicine mixture.
You need it to be obvious, so in a rush it doesn’t go wrong: Message for husband: take that half eaten package of carrots, turn to face your wife and say, “These reheated root vegetables are more important than you. My desire to eat them is greater than my love for you. If you take my food again, we are divorcing.”. Feel stupid yet?
New-Link5725 − NTA. Your husband is a j**k. He’s borderline a**sive in the way he talks to you and demeanor you. He is controlling and expects you to do what he says without questions and follow his orders. This is 100% your husband’s fault. Simple fact, he could have told you when packing the food that he used your container.
Or he could have put names on them. Or he could have used two distinct containers. You were I’m a rush so you weren’t paying attention to his message or looking in the containers. But this whole thing could have been avoided has he talked to you like an adult when packing the food. Honestly, you have bigger problems than communication.
When your husbandnis controlling, and verbally a**sive. His comments were disgusting, demeaning, I necessary and cruel. He went out of his way to make you feel as little as possible and as if this was your fault when it was his.
Yes he absolutely should put more effort into packing food than he does because he’s clearly doing the bare minimum. I always communicate with my husband when I pack his lunch, I tell him what container, where in the fridge and anything extra.
Yes, your husbandnis treating you like a child with the way he talked to you and that isn’t ok. He’s acting like hrs more important than you when in reality, he’s your equal. It would have taken him 2 sec to say which container was which. But he thought that it wasn’t worth his time. I’d take a real hard look at your relationship and get into some couples therapy.
1: Food made the day before is leftovers. That’s what the word means.
2: You two are grown adults; stop policing what each other eats.
3: NTA, he is, because what else is going on that he’s so mad about this. It’s one day’s wasted carrots, it’s not like you’re performing brain surgery. The fate of the world doesn’t rest on this. If he wants you to take a specific container for a specific reason, he needs to use his words like a big boy.
Full_Weakness2213 − NTA. There is so much wrong here. Starting with not calling them leftovers. He could have avoided everything if he explained what he was doing. A simple hey I am going to put more carrots in this specific container. They are for me.
If you typically take the smaller container and he the bigger, essentially you have yours and he his. Then why the hell does he put his in yours and not offer an explanation?
What he is doing is trying to condition you to follow orders without question. On top of that, why is this escalating he should have just said I’m sorry I should have told you what I was doing.
unsafeideas − Are you sure you are not both hangry and less attentive due to that intermittent fasting?
Cause none of this should be such a drama.
InappropriateAccess − ESH, him slightly more so. He told you that the smaller container was for him, but you took it anyway. He should have clarified while you were texting that he made the smaller container for himself with extra carrots, since you normally take the small container.
You both need to communicate better and work on not fighting about these tiny issues. I would suggest, specifically for lunches, that whoever packs them should make a masking tape label to specify who gets which container.
kletskopke − Kinda ESH, but leaning towards NTA because your husband sounds quite condescending. Others already pointed out that you can both work on communicating better, but please put this on the list as well.
Some-Astronaut-6907 − Say this: You need to find a respectful way of communicating your feelings to me. I won’t be scolded like a child and won’t be responding to you when you do that.
Do you think she was wrong to take the smaller container, or could this issue have been solved with clearer communication? How would you handle this type of misunderstanding? Share your thoughts below!
