In today’s story, one husband decides he wants to learn to speak Spanish.

Now, a year later, he’s wondering if he was wrong not to tell his wife.

Let’s see why he didn’t tell his wife when he decided to learn Spanish…

AITAH for learning a foreign language without telling my wife?

English is my native language, and I struggled to learn it due to a learning disability.

As a child I studied Spanish in school, but suffered from a combination of my disability and learned helplessness. Needless to say, I never really learned spanish.

Fast forward 15 years, and I’ve been happily married for four years.

My wife is Japanese, so naturally I tried to learn Japanese to share a bit of her language and culture with her.

I’ve tried off and on to learn Japanese for around two years, but I always fell off the wagon after a month or two and never made much progress.

OP didn’t tell his wife he was going to try to learn Spanish.

A year ago I decided to learn Spanish on a whim. I knew it would be easier than Japanese, and I secretly hoped that I would actually be able to learn it since my struggles with English as a child have made my monolingualism a source of insecurity.

I didn’t tell my wife when I started for two reasons.

First, I expected to fail like I had failed many times before with Japanese and didn’t want to make learning Spanish into a “thing” only to abandon it shortly after.

Second, I thought that my wife would be disappointed or even offended that I was investing my time into learning Spanish instead of Japanese.

A year later, OP is really good at Spanish.

To my surprise, I actually stuck to learning Spanish and made progress, and before I knew it I was 6 months into studying it and could actually understand intermediate level Spanish.

I thought about telling my wife then, but wasn’t sure how to break the news.

Another 6 months later and while my Spanish is far from perfect, I’m around a B2 level and can converse, watch TV, and read comfortably in Spanish.

OP finally told his wife he learned Spanish, and she’s upset.

I finally broke the news to my wife and she was angry.

According to her, she’s less upset about me learning Spanish instead of Japanese, and more upset about me never mentioning that I’ve been learning it over the past year.

From her perspective I basically lied to her for an entire year.

This is sort of true, but on the other hand, if I had spent the last year mastering Tetris without telling her I don’t think she would feel the same way.

For that reason, I feel like deep down she’s really upset that I learned Spanish instead of Japanese, even though the two languages are vastly different in terms of difficulty for an native English speaker.

AITAH?

Communication is really important in marriage. I believe the wife about why she’s upset.

Let’s see how Reddit responded…

This reader thinks OP should’ve told his wife.

Another reader calls OP’s lying “red flags.”

This reader thinks OP’s wife is insecure.

This person doesn’t think the secret was a big deal.

Another reader points out WHY the secret was a big deal.

This reader puts OP’s secret in perspective…

I think he should’ve told his wife. Now she might wonder what else he’s hiding from her.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a daughter who invited herself to her parents’ 40th anniversary vacation for all the wrong reasons.