'AITA for putting 2 pallets of pellets in front of my husband’s man cave?'
"AITA for putting 2 pallets of pellets in front of my husband’s man cave?"
I (28F) have been married to my husband (28M) for 5 years. My husband always likes to be the nice guy and IMO, gets taken advantage of at times. During conflicts, I often have to step up and be the bad guy to advocate for us.
This spring, one of my husband’s college friends sold his house but did not buy a new one immediately. He asked my husband if he could store some stuff in our basement/garage for a couple months, and my husband said yes.
All of the stuff ended up taking up our entire garage. I have my car in front and our lawn mower, but other than that, his friend’s stuff takes up the majority of our room.
It has now been nearly 6 months. I had been asking my husband about when his friend will have his stuff out for about a month, and my husband was extremely passive about the whole thing.
I reminded him we had a pellet delivery coming for the winter and that I needed that space to store them. My husband said he would take care of it, and got annoyed when I kept bringing it up. He told me I was nagging him and it was making him angry so I stopped.
The delivery arrived yesterday, and the only free space we had in our garage that is easily accessible (without doing significant rearranging) was near the door to my husband’s man cave (he has a separate finished room in the corner of the garage/basement area where he and his friends like to hang out).
I spent yesterday morning clearing a path to that area, and when the pellets arrived, I had them put the 2 pallets right in that space in front of the door. You can open the door to get in, but it’s tight.
When my husband came home, he asked why the pallets were there, and I told him it was because they needed to be easily accessible and that there was no other space where they could be stored with all of the extra stuff in our garage.
He asked why I didn’t put the pellets in my garage spot. I told him that I was not about to park my car outside for the foreseeable future because his friend is taking up all our space, and that if he doesn’t want them there, then he needs to get serious about telling his friend to come get his stuff. He became annoyed and said that it was passive aggressive to put the pallets right in front of his man cave.
I told him that I specifically made sure that he could get in and out of the door, and that I would be happy to help him move all of the bags once there was space for them where they normally go, but until then, they are staying there where I can easily get to them. He said I am an AH, but I think it was a natural consequence. AITA?
Here is what readers had to say in response to the OP’s post:
NTA. We need to normalize being right and being okay without feeling guilty, when dealing with people who don’t think outside their own realm of reality. Your husband made a series of choices that did not affect him until they did.
However, his series of choices affected you from the beginning. He didn’t care. You did. Now he cares, and you feel guilty. He has not felt guilty about his choices affecting you. You should not feel guilty for treating him the way he treats you.
So... he's a nice guy and wants to please everyone except his actual wife?
NTA. Your husband was going to let his friend store that crap in your garage until the heat death of the universe so long as it didn’t inconvenience him in any way. His expectation that you you park outside rather than he expend effort should give you a good understanding of how he prioritizes your convenience over his.
Having the pallets placed in the only space for them gives your husband the opportunity to continue to do nothing or make effort to access his space. In either case, he has agency and you’re not forcing anyone to do anything.
This is why wives get exhausted with their husbands. He refuses to step up and the wife does all of the emotional work and it becomes a burden and they get worn out.
move HIS friends trash into HIS man cave from your shared space. He does NOT get to evict you from your own freaking parking space for his piss taking friend.
NTA. *And* that's not passive aggressive, that's just handling your business. You've already told him, multiple times, to get rid of the crap in the garage. Now there is no space. Unreal that he would expect you to *park outside* so that he can easily get into his "man cave", when the ENTIRE garage is filled with his friends crap.
NTA. You stopped nagging. This is the consequence. The garage is so full he can't get to his space because he allowed his friend to take up the space. So options for him are his friend moves his stuff or the pallets stay. Seems like an easy choice.
NTA. You gave him a month of notice. The pellets are something you actually need for your household, were literally ordered by y’all, and 100% regularly expected. This isn’t something that surprised him out of nowhere.
IMO, you were more considerate than you had to be by doing a bunch of reorganizing on your own to make sure he could still access the room (aka, not face the full consequences of HIS OWN choices).
The next time he calls you an AH, ask him why. If he’s so concerned about people pleasing and being the nice guy, how come you aren’t “people” too? Why is it okay in his mind for you to be upset and inconvenienced, but not others? You can show the steps you actively took to make sure he wasn’t impacted by things, but can he?