'I called my husband out for his weaponized incompetence and it hurt his feelings. AITA?'

"I told my husband I don’t trust him and now I don’t know what to do."

So my husband (27 M) and I (26 F) have been together for 6 years, married for about 8 months. Important context for our relationship: We met when I was in undergrad and my husband was working full time. Before, my husband was the primary earner of our house (paying our rent and utilities and groceries) while I focused on keeping the house (cooking dinners, cleaning, laundry, errands, etc.).

Fast forward to now, we both have full time jobs and our salaries are about the same so we are splitting all bills evenly. Well, recently we had a talk about how I felt as though the mental and physical responsibilities of the house still fall primarily on me even though we agreed that the dynamic would change when I started contributing more financially.

I still plan and cook most nights (4-5 days a week if we don’t meal prep), I “shut down” the house at night (clean the kitchen, put dishes in the sink/dishwasher, pick up our mess and the cat toys, etc.), i do the laundry and bathroom cleaning, and basically everything else.

I have been very open throughout our relationship about how I don’t want our relationship/marriage to be one where the wife carries the mental load for the entire family while the man only acts as the breadwinner and doesn’t help at all until she inevitably has a mental breakdown or is pushed to divorce. I witnessed how damaging this can be with my own mom and dad and I refuse to repeat that.

We hardly ever fight, but almost all of our arguments have been on this topic. I’ve broken down in tears from exhaustion or from feelings of being overwhelmed trying to balance school, multiple jobs, and everything at home, and yet…nothing really changes.

My husband has been seemingly very open and receptive of these conversations and is always says he will do better to take more off of my plate, but this only lasts a few days or weeks before we fall into old habits and I am doing it all myself.

So, the most recent argument. On our usual after work phone call, I asked my husband to stop at the store and pick up a few ingredients for dinner that I had forgotten when I went grocery shopping. All we needed was ground beef, a can of tomatoes, and milk.

When he got to the store, he asked me to remind him what we needed and after he said “okay, so pasta for dinner? That’s easy. I can cook it since you cooked yesterday” and I said “Thank you. I have a migraine and really don’t want to cook anyways so that is perfect.” So he gets home about 30 minutes later and starts unloading the groceries. I ask “Where are the tomatoes?” he said “I forgot them”

I said “Okay…should I go back to the store because we can’t make a sauce without a base and we have nothing else prepped for dinner.” he said “No, I forgot them so I’ll go back.” So he goes back to the store.

At this point, it is almost 7:00 and I am super hungry. I decided to start the pasta on my own because at this point, he wouldn’t be back for another 30 minutes which means dinner wouldn’t be done for at least another hour.

He comes home and says “I thought I was cooking?” and I explained the timing issue and how I needed to eat to take my migraine medicine anyways so this way we can eat earlier.

His response: “This is the f***** problem. You always ask me to step in and help take the burden off of you but then you do it before I can. Or if I do help, you stand there and micromanage everything that I’m doing. It’s like you don’t trust me to do anything.”

This is where I might be the a******. My response: “I don’t trust you. I mean I trust you in the big ways, like I trust you to be honest and loyal and take care of me and our cats and I would literally put my life in your hands. But on the day to day small stuff, I feel like I can’t trust you at all.

You keep saying you are going to help out around here but you constantly forget things I ask from you or claim you never heard me say it in the first place, especially if it was simple something around the house. I mean jesus, you can’t even remember a can of tomatoes 5 minutes after I asked you to grab them.”

He was quiet for a minute, said “Then why did you marry me?” in the most heartbreaking voice ever and left the room crying. I finished cooking, packed it away in the fridge with a note that said “I’m sorry”, made a bowl of cereal, and ate it on the couch (where I slept that night). I know my delivery was harsh and I probably took it too far, but how else can I get it across that I need him to do better?

I’m not asking him to take over the entire mental or physical load, I would just appreciate coming home to dinner cooking or the apartment clean every once in a while like he gets to come home to almost every single day. I love this man more than anything in the world but don’t know how much longer I can play this “I promise I can do better” game. I am so tired.

This is what people had to say to OP:

MedCup4505 said:

How can you really trust someone who isn’t trustworthy? My ex “forgot” everything he said he do, routinely. By the time we had kids, I didn’t trust him to look after the dog, let alone a child. I trusted him not to cheat 100%. But for all the other stuff? Nope. That’s not enough trust to keep a marriage going.

SaucyGremlina said:

Honestly girl this sounds less like you not trusting him and more like you being burnt out from carrying the whole house on your back. Anyone would snap eventually. He heard “I don’t trust you” as “I don’t love you,” but what you meant was “I need a partner not another dependent.” Y’all need a real sit-down when emotions aren’t cooked.

MoshingMenace said:

I think snapping was going to happen eventually. You can only hear the same thing over and over again before you stop believing it. I do, however, really believe you would both benefit from couples therapy. They can help breakdown the communication in a way you can both understand. While what you said was harsh, it doesn’t make it wrong. I hope you’re both able to work through this!

OP responded:

I agree that we could use couples therapy. I feel like I’m not being heard and I’m doing it all and he feels like I am micromanaging and attacking him. I have tried talking about it calmly, even asking for his input on how to improve things so he doesn’t feel like it’s all about what he’s not doing, but at the end of the day, I’m still doing the work of trying to figure out a plan for both of us.

I have to be careful about what I say and how I say it so it doesn’t hurt his feelings but that just adds more to my mental load. I feel like a therapist could at least help us figure out what the real underlying issue is in all this because it can’t always be that “he forgot”

th987 said:

You know, you make your own money. If he won’t pull his own weight, I’d hire some household help for myself. He won’t solve the problem. You can solve it for yourself. You could also stop doing his laundry and stop cooking for him. Let him see what it’s like to do it for himself. He’s acting like a baby, like he’s incapable of jotting down a note on his phone about three items to pick up at the store.

And Arashirk said:

Oh, honey, he manipulated you really well, didn't he? He played the self-pity card and you fell for it.

He is not trustworthy. He is not reliable. You are carrying the mental load. He is not trying to do better, he is half-assing everything so you won't bother to ask him again.

Two days later, OP shared this update:

Thank you to everyone for helping me feel validated in my exhaustion while also calling me out and helping me see my husband’s perspective. Here is the current situation:

I flew home for the weekend for a girls trip with my mom and my aunt while my husband stayed home and watched the UFC fight with a few of his friends. Sunday morning, I texted husband to confirm my flight times so he could come pick me up and he said “I’ll be there. We need to talk.”

So I land, get my bags, and get to the car and he has flowers for me. He said “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have forgotten the tomatoes.” and I said “Thank you but it wasn’t really about the tomatoes.” and before I could say anything else he goes “I know. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

He then goes on to tell me that during the fight, his friends asked where I was and he said “She’s with her family” and they said “ooh are you in trouble?” and he said “Yes” so then he told them all about our fight. Apparently, his friends Chase (35M) and Alex (29 M) (both married) told him that he missed the point and that he was in the wrong.

His friend Andrew (28M) was also there but he is not married or dating at the moment so I’m assuming that he opted to stay out of it. He didn’t tell me any other details about their conversation but his conclusion was that he was wrong and needed to apologize for “Whatever the real issue was.”

I sat there for a moment looking absolutely shocked. I said “Do you even know what you’re barely apologizing for?” and he said “Yeah, I forget things sometimes and you have do it for me. This time I forgot the tomatoes and you felt like you had to make dinner so you got mad and snapped at me.”

I took a few moments to collect myself and fix my WTF face before said “No, the issue is that you don’t listen to me. I was mad about the tomatoes because it was the final straw. You don’t just forget things at the store. You forget to do the things that you’ve agreed to do.

How many times do I have to ask you to help me cook or help around the house? How many chore charts and chore lists and to do lists do we have to make for you to actually help with anything?” he got defensive and said “If you reminded me of the things you need me to do, I would do them”

To which I said “Thats the problem. Asking you to do things and then having to constantly remind you that you should do them is nagging and exhausting. I need you to remember. Write it down. Set an alarm. Find someway to make it work for you. I can’t keep asking you to step up. I need you to actually step up.”

He didn’t say anything for a few minutes so I said “I think we have to go to couples counseling. I don’t think this is something we can solve on our own.” he said “fine” and then drove the rest of the way home in silence.

When we got home, he went into his game room and started blasting music. I knocked on the door and asked him if we could finish our conversation and his response was “You already figured it out for us so what else is there to talk about?”

I said “This is childish and I’m leaving. You don’t want to figure things out just the two of is and you don’t want to have professional help in communicating. I don’t know what else to do but I can’t do it myself and things can’t stay like this. I’m going to my parent’s house, let me know when you’re ready to talk.” and I left.

That was two days ago and I am still at my parent’s house. The only texts and calls I’ve gotten from him are “Where is x?” or “When are you coming back?” I have not responded to the “Where is x?” texts but I told him I will come back when he is ready to talk seriously. No crying, no arguing, just a serious conversation about what the real issue is and how we are going to change things. No responses to that yet.

The more I think about this whole situation, the more I realize that I’ve been played this entire relationship. I am always the bad guy, everything is my fault, I am not allowed to be emotional because that hurts his feelings.

This along with the weaponized incompetence is too much. I want to have a real conversation with him but history shows it won’t go anywhere. If he doesn’t agree to couples therapy or some other major way to show me that he wants this too, I’m leaving. I’m not going to fight for this on my own. Thank you all for your advice.