Man 'annoyed' wife opened letter addressed to only him; she won't let it go. AITA?

Trust is the bedrock of a healthy relationship.

If you're going to make a marriage last for the long haul, you want to rest assured that you and your partner are on solid ground. If your partner doesn't trust you, particularly about the small things that make up daily life, then that's a major red flag on multiple levels.

In a popular post on the AITA subreddit, a man asked if he was wrong for being annoyed that his wife opened a letter addressed to him. He wrote:

'AITA for being annoyed that my wife opened a letter addressed to (only) me?'

Been married 8 years. We have NOTHING to hide. I would never get mail my spouse “couldn’t read.” A few weeks ago, I came home, and a thick letter, addressed to me) was open. I think it was something related to insurance, but you couldn’t tell from the envelope.

I was annoyed it was opened, and I expressed my frustration that a letter in my name was open. This has never come up before, and I’ve never opened a letter addressed to (only) her. I thought it was done and over with, but a couple times recently, she’s made a couple sarcastic comments about not having opened mail addressed to me.

I let the first one go, but we argued about the second comment. AITA? Do you all open your spouses’ mail? Does it matter to you?

People had a lot to say about this one.

Ironmike11B wrote:

NAH. I get it. It's just that little nagging notion 'why did you f#$K with my mail?' that sticks in your brain. You know you're not guilty of anything. It's the idea of having your privacy invaded. Just gotta let it go.

Crzy_Grl wrote:

We open each other's mail and packages all the time.

Awesomest24 wrote:

You are married and live together, plus you have no secrets to hide according to you, so I find it a little weird that you are making such a big deal out of it. But other people operate differently I suppose?

forte6320 wrote:

I open all of the mail because I deal with all of the finances, etc. No one cares.

If there is nothing to hide, why is it a big deal?

virtualchoirboy wrote:

NAH. I'm the sole income earner. As such, most of the utilities and bills are in my name so they all come with just my name on them. My wife is a stay-at-home mom and essentially runs the day-to-day stuff with the house so she opens the mail. I've never thought twice about it.

You sound like you're more possessive. Have another talk with her and let her know about your preference. That being said, if you do get mail addressed to only you, don't let it sit either. Open it as soon as you're made aware of it. Some spouses get in the habit of opening mail because the person it's addressed to 'doesn't get around to it' for days.

Mammoth_Rice3360 wrote:

NTA. I’m married and DO open mail for my husband, but I asked him waaaay before the first time I did it, and he gave me the go-ahead. Now I just do it with what I think is junk so I can shred it without him missing something important, and he doesn’t have to deal with the headache of sifting through tons of junk mail. Feel like this is only okay to do if you ask first and set up some ground rules.

After receiving lots of responses, OP jumped on with a small update/clarification:

EDIT: Thanks for the replies. I never expected this amount of response.

I’m…prolly gonna turn off notifications for a while, so I can sleep soon. The only thing I want to clarify, since I saw it a couple of times: “Why keep bringing it up/why does it bother me/why don’t I drop it?”

The argument was a couple of weeks back. It lasted a couple of minutes. After that, that seemed like that was that. There’s been two sarcastic comments from her about it. The first, I ignored, and was a few days ago. Tonight, I didn’t ignore the second one, and asked why she kept doing that. Never got much of a response.

Either way, it’s likely something bigger is going on, and no, we’re not divorcing over this or anything. I just wanted to see how others fall on this, since I imagine it’s something that happens in a marriage/joint relationship.

While the internet can't fully agree, answers seem to land in the realm of NTA or NAH.