'AITA for secretly filming my wife eating all my fries to make a point?'

"AITA for filming my wife eating all my fries to make a point?"

I've seen many posts about wives/girlfriends who insist they "don't want anything" when the husband/BF is getting food but then proceed to eat his food, so I apologize if this sounds familiar.

I don't eat a lot of fast food, but I do indulge when we have long drives. My wife typically packs a lot of healthy snacks for herself (yogurts/quinoa salads in the cooler, protein bars, whatever). I like McD's. She claims the food is "disgusting" but then invariably wants "a few" fries and ends up eating half of them or more, although she always denies eating so many and claims she just had a "few."

On the trip in question a couple weeks ago, it's she and I, and my 13 y.o. son "Nick." Wife needs a bathroom so we pull off at an exit where there's a McD's. Son and I go to order food to go while she's in the bathroom (I asked her if she wanted anything, as I always do, and she said, "No, but I will take a couple of your fries.")

My go-to order at McD's is the $5 (although now it's $6 at a lot of places) "value meal" which includes a McDouble, 4 McNuggets, a small fries and a drink. It's plenty of food for me. It would still be plenty if my wife took "a few" or "a couple" fries. I like McD's fries, but I always eat them last because while I don't mind if the fries are not piping hot, I do like the other food best when it's still warm.

Side note: Having read other stories on this topic, I'm sure some will say, "Just order more fries even though she says she doesn't want anything." I've tried. I get a medium for me and give her the small from the value meal. But a medium fries is almost $4 (and it is over $4 with tax). That's adding over 60% to the cost of the meal.

And when I've done this, then she insists on not touching the fries "because I told you not to get any for me." So now I've got a small fries and a medium fries to eat on my own... which I can do, but it seems like a waste to spend another $4 since I was perfectly happy with the original amount of food.

Anyway, on this day, I tell my son I want to do an experiment. I tell him after we get our food and get back to the car to take out all of his food, take my burger and give it to me, and take my McNuggets and hold them in the back seat, so that the only thing left in the bag is my fries.

Now, admittedly, a small fries at McD's isn't that many, but it's typically at least 20-30 fries. I tell him to put the bag with the fries on the console between my wife's and my seat, and to set up his phone to take a video of the bag from the back seat which will record until I tell him to stop. I tell him that I am not going to put my hand in the bag at any time and I predict that his mom will eat all of my fries.

Sure enough, we're driving along... I eat my burger, make some small talk, see my wife's hand go into the bag several times, I ask my son for my McNuggets, I eat those (FYI: I eat them sauce-free so no mess in the car!), chit-chat further, all the while smirking to myself as I see my wife's hand go back into the bag some more.

Finally she says, "OK, give me your garbage" and starts putting it in the McD's bag. I say, "What are you doing?" and she says "Cleaning up." I say, "I still need to eat my fries" and she says, "We ate them all, honey."

I'll admit I overacted a bit here on purpose, incredulously announcing loudly, "What do you mean 'we' ate them all? I haven't had any!" To be clear, I wasn't mad -- this was the result I expected anyway -- but I tried to act mad while suppressing laughter. She said, "Don't be silly, I only had a couple."

And I repeated that I had not had a single fry and that I had video evidence to prove it. She said, "What do you mean?" and I said that Nick had taken a video of the past 20 minutes or so and you will not see me take any fries from that bag, so if they're all gone it's because you ate them all.

And she blew up at me -- and him -- in a way that I did not expect. Yelling about "videotaping without consent" (as if I had made a surreptitious NSFW tape or something egregious like that), yelling at Nick for "going along with your father's foolish pranks," etc.

I told her I just wanted her to understand that she eats more of my food than she realizes and this is why I would prefer to just get her a separate order of fries so that we can both enjoy our food without resentment.

She never watched the video, although I think she now believes that she did in fact eat all the fries. However, she's been ignoring me and, worse, treating our son badly (blowing up at him for little things that never have bothered her before) for the past two weeks, expecting an apology for videotaping her, I guess. I thought this was a harmless way to make my point. AITA?

This is what people had to say to OP:

Stealthbomber16 said:

your wife sounds exhausting

Muudercai said:

She’s being childish. NTA.

BarneyPoppy said:

I think it's funny, she's just mad cause you proved your point.

ProfPlumDidIt said:

NTA. You tried other options, including talking to her about it, so showing her what was happening was reasonable. She's an especially huge asshole for treating your son badly over it.

I will say that an alternate option would be telling her to get out the fries she wants first then closing the bag and moving it to your other side, but that would probably have still pissed her off, so at least this way she's out of denial.

Adelucas said:

Didn't you know? Stolen food doesnt count towards your calories and is really healthy because it doesn't count.

KDY_ISD said:

NTA, but does your wife have any self-esteem issues (imagined or not) related to her weight? Is she bringing healthy snacks because she's trying to exercise control over her diet?

If so, she may feel like your annoyance over her eating fries is secretly judgment about her weight. You know that isn't the case, but she may feel that way even subconsciously.

Being confronted with evidence of her eating all your fries is not just embarrassing but potentially a reminder that her self-control is failing, and her lashing out might come from that feeling of embarrassment and shame. Lashing out isn't a healthy response to those feelings but it is a fairly common one.

Obviously, I'm just some stranger on the internet and I don't know anything about you or your wife, but this is how it reads to me from the outside.

OP responded:

Fair point, thanks. I don't think this is the case -- she's a runner, very fit. (I'm also pretty fit -- although my diet is worse than hers; I have one of those fortunate metabolisms, but I do work out as well.)

But she does flagellate herself in other contexts (like not being able to control herself at her mom's Christmas dinner) so maybe in this case she's flagellating me and my son for instigating this feeling in herself.