'I think my boyfriend is treating me like his secretary. AITA?'
"AITA for telling my boyfriend not to treat me like his secretary?"
This morning, as my boyfriend was getting ready to leave for work, he asked me a succession of questions (Do you have a USB-C cable I can borrow? What am I cooking tonight? Do we have beef? Is it going to rain today?). He was in a rush and I was having breakfast at the table, from where I can reach the under-counter fridge.
After the "do we have beef’" question, I just shrugged like I didn’t know and opened the fridge so he could see inside. He went "okay, cool" from across the table and then asked me about the weather. I said "I don’t know, I’m not your Siri."
He went "I’m just asking you a question" and I went "You’ve asked me lots of questions" and then something like "people ask their mom or their secretary things like this." He got annoyed and said I was being weird, then left saying "you’re just angry because I asked you to turn off the light in the bedroom."
(We disagree over what counts as "wasteful" use of electricity - I don’t think having one small lamp in the other room lit so I can see where I’m going when I walk in there in twenty minutes is wasteful, he does).
This was all sort of joking, but I could tell he was annoyed. For context, we’ve been together over six years, we moved in together nine months ago, and we’ve spoken many times before about gender roles/division of labor/partner expectations, including in couples therapy.
I know he has good intentions and that he was in a rush. I could’ve answered his questions and told him later to please check these things for himself and not leave the mental load up to me. On the other hand, these are the moments where I feel it’s most productive to call out the dynamics I want to avoid. AITA for being snarky and telling him in the moment?
Here's what people had to say to OP:
LittleFootFoot said:
All the women who have experienced this know you’re NTA. He’s not “making small talk” - he’s asking you questions he could easily answer himself and shifting the mental load to you. This issue was magnified for my husband and I after our first child. I would already have my own set of 100 questions running through my brain (did my son eat enough, does he have clean bottles...
When will he nap today, do I need to change his diaper soon, where did I put xyz, etc.) If my husband said something like...“Do I need a jacket, is it cold outside?…it was enough to make me flip. We talked about it and he stopped asking me questions he could easier find out the answer. You are smart to call this out now. Maybe your tone was poor, but overall NTA.
SeaAd16910 said:
NTA. The issue isn't that he is asking your questions, it's that by asking you questions he is making you responsible for the answer. All the things he asked, he could find out/take ownership for himself.
SeaAd16910 said:
FWIW my partner used to do this to me and we've had a few conversations about how it makes me feel responsible for everything (and yes, carry the mental load). It's still a work in progress, but I remind him he is a smart guy and can figure it out.
snark_maiden said:
NTA. Husband and I have been married for over 25 years, and when he asks me things that he’s perfectly capable of determining the answers to himself, I say “if only there were some way you could look that up, on a mobile device perhaps."
josephinesparrows said:
NTA. When I moved in with my boyfriend I discovered an annoying habit. He would say "hey where is the grater?" and then find it literally 2 seconds later and say "found it!"
It would drive me nuts because he wasn't just talking to himself, he would say my name, thus interrupting me for a lazy and pointless question because he found it himself straight away, let alone the fact that he can have a decent look himself FIRST. It drove me nuts that he would take my attention away, but he did not get it for the longest time.
ova_REEES said:
NTA, he's nagging you while you're eating breakfast. Are his hands painted on?