Sometimes spouses can’t see eye-to-eye — even if it’s just over a meal.

Learn how one Redditor’s tough time has been compounded with her husband’s particularities in the kitchen.

She has finally put her foot down, but her husband doesn’t like it. She’s wondering if she did the wrong thing.

Let’s read all the details.

AITA for deciding to cook for myself and not my husband?

I (42F) have been married to my husband (48F) for 12 years, together for 15.

We both work full time, no kids.

My husband is ND and extremely successful in his career, but struggles with day-to-day functioning.

It started with dietary restrictions…

He has a lot of dietary restrictions and, over the years, I was happy to work around those. Mostly, we now eat homemade salad and baked chicken, in various forms.

Unfortunately, this resulted in a situation where I do ALL the cooking.

Any attempts to cook for me have lasted about one night before he is overwhelmed and frazzled and so I just go back to cooking, as it’s what I have always done.

But it’s not just the cooking that has this wife wiped.

I also pay all the bills, manage the household, take care of the dogs, do the laundry, clean the house, and work my own jobs. I am an academic and work at two schools.

Over the last five years, my husband has been sick with various ailments, starting with atypical long COVID, and then this year, accelerating into an allergy to wood dust, intolerance to edibles, allergy to a paint I used on the kitchen cabinets, a reaction to our gas stove, and now (and this is the problem) an inability to tolerate chicken being baked in a tiny electric toaster oven, as I’m not allowed to use gas anymore.

He will not eat other meats or pasta.

But it doesn’t end here…

I cannot use the stovetop, as [it] causes oil to splatter, and it bothers him.

He has pursued no medical solution aside from an inhaler from his PCP.

His symptoms are mysterious and variable.

He has not seen an allergist or rheumatologist in spite of my pleading.

Not to mention, her father’s health has been declining.

In the middle of all of this, I was the primary caretake for my father, who died slowly and brutally.

He died in my arms on 12/21/24 after 10 months of illness, during which time I became his medical and financial power of attorney. He died hardly more than two weeks ago.

For those of you that know, you know. For those of you that do not know, I don’t want you to know.

I am now the primary caretaker for my mother.

Since the death, my husband’s health issues about me cooking have arisen and have become the focal point of a tremendous amount of friction in our marriage and home life.

But because of her parents’ situations, this wife hasn’t been helping like she used to.

I know I am not helping; I am exhausted, I am traumatized by the death, I am lost; I am angry at not being able to cook in my own home unless I break my work day to do so, so that the chicken off-gassing has passed by the time he returns home from work.

And even then, it causes so much stress, which compounds my desperate sadness.

It seems silly to grieve the loss of the ability to cook as I did, but I do.

Finally, the wife realized that a boundary needed to be set in place.

This morning, finally, I realized that perhaps I needed to remove myself from this whole emotional food-centered loop and told my husband he can cook and shop for himself, and I will cook and shop for myself and the dogs.

He was not happy about this at all.

I feel like a miserable failure of a wife. But I am drowning.

I had to put some sort of boundary down so that I could protect and nourish myself in this hard time.

AITA for longer wanting to cook in this impossible environment?

Is this wife being too harsh on her husband, or is this exactly what she needs?

Let’s read the comments below to find out.

Redditors didn’t hold back on what they thought. This reader was tough on the husband.

People consistently said “NTA,” but with varying reasons.

They even mentioned his reasons shouldn’t have anything to do with it.

Redditors were truly sympathetic to this woman’s situation.

This woman is a partner, not a parent — and she deserves a husband that knows this.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.