Husband divorces 'sneaky' wife because she won't stop ordering takeout. AITA? + UPDATE
"AITA for completely cutting my wife off from our finances because she wouldn’t stop ordering takeout?"
Careful_Credit_4645
I am 41 years old and male. My wife is 39 years old. My wife doesn’t work due to a minor disability. It’s not as if she cannot work, but she complains of discomfort and exhaustion all the time. The discussion over her working basically ended five years ago, and I have completely given up on the prospect of her ever having a job again.
Seeing as she doesn’t even come close to qualifying for disability and brings in no income, we currently live entirely off my salary. I do not mind financially supporting her, but my wife’s spending habits have gradually become more and more reckless.
It began with her ordering takeout twice a week, and then that escalated into three times a week, and now she’s ordering takeout nearly every day. This is all despite our fridge being stocked constantly. I do the shopping, and I make sure to even keep our freezer full of things she would only have to microwave.
Last month was a particularly heavy one for her. She spent $1,176 on delivery apps alone. We cannot afford this. There were several days that she ordered twice. I may have reacted harshly, but on Friday, I pulled money out of our savings, completely paid off the card, and then canceled it. I then removed all the money from our joint account and funneled it into my own account.
Apparently my wife learned this when she tried to order takeout. She tried to call the company who explained the card had been canceled. She texted me asking what had happened, and I responded that she was cut off.
Well, when I walked in the door that evening, my wife was lying on the floor dramatically saying that she had “low blood sugar.” I told her she could eat any of the food we have in our fridge or freezer. I also noticed that she took the garbage out, probably for the first time in a decade (I’m surprised she even knew where the outdoor bin was).
I can only assume she was disposing of the evidence of what she ate (as she was pretending to have not eaten), but I honestly don’t care enough to dig through the garbage to find it. She was furious at me all weekend. Was what I did over the top?
Here were the top rated comments from readers in response to the OP's post:
emo_bassist
NTA $1176 on takeout? Thats a half a months wages for me. No this needs to stop and the manipulation with the blood sugar thing is beyond over dramatic and the fact she took then garbage after years of not doing proves she knows what she is doing.
Busy-Persimmon-748
I’m wondering if it will save money long term to divorce her. Damn.
Mishy162
NTA. Wow your wife spent close to my food, fuel, entertainment, clothing etc budget for the month just on takeout. She needs to get a job, part time at a minimum. Why are you still married?
RemDC
“Now that I know you can manage the garbage, I’m leaving that task to you.” Never take out the garbage again. As to her tantrum? Yawn. If she wants takeout so badly, she can find a way to earn money to pay for it.
ERVetSurgeon
NTA. Why are you still with her? She is using you as her personal ATM.
reditteditred
She'll be calling it financial abuse soon. Your best bet is to lock her completely out of any funds, fight any divorce, and force her to sort her own life out. Let her go cold turkey, oh, and get some cold Turkey for the fridge. Why fight the divorce? Because she'll screw you through the court system.
Can't get undeserved alimony if you're not divorce. Also keep all records of grocery bills, that way you can prove it's not abuse. And take daily videos with timestamps showing the fridge stocked. Record as much evidence that it's not abuse, its laziness. Not just for the courts, but for when "friends " start accusing you of abuse.
Individual-Foxlike
It would have been better to have a proactive conversation, but you're still NTA. As someone with "minor disabilities", people like her disgust me. Is this really what you want to deal with for the next 30+ years?
Additional-Aioli-545
Nope! NTA. The most I would do for her is give her an allowance for her personal items ONLY. If she blows that on take out, well, sister, it sucks to be you.
AverageAndTolerable
I agree. An allowance would be much better, give her her own bank account and transfer into it each month/week, whatever. If she spends it on take-out so be it. At least then it won't be financial abuse.
dingdongcheeseball
NTA; I would hazard a guess she's eating takeout because she's bored, lonely and unfulfilled because she doesn't have a job to occupy her. I think I'd suggest if she wants take out she might have to get a job to pay for it. Or just get a voluntary job at least. Doing something to help people. Then maybe she'll realise that she could be contributing to your household and community rather than sitting around eating.
TheodoreIsaPsycho
NTA. Someone in the family needs to make sure the finances work so you don’t lose your residence or electricity/water, etc. It just feels like OP is missing the point here. The spending on takeout seems like a symptom of a larger problem.
She’s become a leech. She has no interest in a partnership with OP. OP is basically just her parent at this point, providing for her, shopping for her, monitoring her credit card use, and it sounds like she’s essentially regressed to the point of a snotty teenager.
I get OP loves her and wants to make it work, but she needs to do some work too, starting with therapy and a job. This is unreal, not to mention insanely unhealthy to be eating that much takeout.
Ten days later, the OP returned with an update.
Careful_Credit_4645
Nine days ago, I made a post about how my unemployed wife had spent $1,176 on delivery apps in just a month. This is egregiously outside of what we can afford to spend on takeout, and since she didn’t seem willing to stop, I canceled our credit card and moved the money from our joint account into my own.
For the following few days, my wife kept talking about how I was financially abusing her. She threw several tantrums despite apparently being severely malnourished, threatened divorce, threw a bunch of the food we had in the fridge away to try and strongarm me into letting her get takeout.
She even tried to guess my bank account password a bunch of times (sorry my password isn’t TacoBell123). That last one was how I learned if you try to guess someone’s bank account password enough times, the bank will send them an automated email.
But last Friday, the complaints and threats stopped. She seemed mostly back to normal. I figured she had given up. That was until today, which was garbage day. When I took the last bag out before taking the bin down to the curb, I discovered half a dozen fast food bags and other takeout containers in it.
My wife wasn’t supposed to have access to money. I had no idea how she was affording the food. I confronted her about it, and first she denied everything. I had to bring all of her fast food garbage in to get her to fess up: she had taken out a loan.
Now, I thought that she had borrowed money from a friend or family member. But she had taken out one of those predatory payday loans. Before you ask, no, I have NO IDEA how she was approved.
Within the next hour, I froze my credit. I then drove her to the payday loan place, where I paid the loan off in cash. I will now have to dip further into my savings to pay the rent.
I suppose in a certain way, cutting her off was successful. She didn’t order takeout anymore. She just drove to the restaurants to pick up her food, for the low low price of $20 for every $100 she borrowed, or $60 in fees in total.
In addition, I told her that we would be getting divorced. So yeah. My marriage is over. I don’t even know what alimony laws in my state are like, but I assume she’ll happily live in a cardboard box under a bridge if Uber Eats will bring her food there.
Here were the top rated comments from readers in response to the OP's update:
Aegon2050
I think divorce is the best course of action here. She needs professional help but that's not your problem anymore. I'm glad you took steps to protect yourself financially. Sadly there is just fundamentally something wrong with her and soon she'll self destruct, starting with the divorce.
Careful_Credit_4645
When I paid off the payday loan, I decided that would be the last thing I ever did for her. It was far more than she deserved. My sister has been addicted to h3Roin for over 20 years. I haven't talked to her in about a decade, but this was the kind of shit that she would pull.
I remember how she and her loser boyfriend would steal shit from my room to pawn so they could buy more drugs, and I honestly wouldn't put it past my wife at this point to start selling my things so she could buy more Chipotle.
I'm sorry. I'm just so furious. As I worked every day, my wife sat around ordering takeout and living like a queen, and when the (almost literal) gravy train stopped, she decided to imperil our financial future for more food. And my God, she has gotten so fat. She's basically waddling around like a penguin now.
But what really fucking pisses me off is that after taking out that payday loan, instead of putting it into a new account to order takeout, she went to the restaurant drive-throughs.
It was almost as if she wanted to stretch it to last for as long as possible, which wasn't an issue when it was money that I earned. She knew that the payday loan was probably a one-time hail Mary, so she actually, in her own twisted little way, tried to exercise financial responsibility.
People in the last post yelled at me for not communicating. We had fought about this dozens of times. Every time the credit card bill rolled in, I would tell her she needed to stop, that we were losing everything because of her habit. I told her again and again and again, but she didn't give a sh!+. She needed more of that garbage.
I honestly don't care. If she's depressed, I don't care. If she's agoraphobic (which I doubt), I don't care. She has never shown even the slightest bit of remorse. Eventually even my sister with her heroin-addled brain apologized for stealing my GameCube. My wife couldn't even do that.
She's a lazy piece of sh!+ faking a disability, and people were blaming me as if that absolved her of all wrongdoing. If it makes me an ahole, fine. I'm not fucking up the rest of my life because some dimwitted sloth with a dIsABiLiTy can only muster up the energy to get off her ass when it involves food she bought with money that someone else earned.