Imagine living in a neighborhood where you have a lot of older neighbors who would jump at the chance to have a younger, handy neighbor help them with various tasks. If you were young and handy, would you be willing to help, or would you refuse?

In this story, one man is in this situation, and he refuses to help. The problem is that his wife keeps volunteering him to help anyway!

Keep reading for all the details.

AITA For telling my wife to “Do it herself” after she volunteered me to help my neighbors again?

I am 28M and my wife is 26F. We also have a 6 year old son and a 4 year old daughter.

Now I work a lot, housing prices are very high here especially in the location we live. I work in IT so I make quite a lot but regardless it is a struggle and I often find myself working overtime to get some extra pay and of course climb up the ladder.

My wife is a SAHM and is active in the kids school and the neighborhood.

What is important here is that my wife likes the neighbors meanwhile I avoid them because they are primarily nosy 50’s something single ladies who always ask me to do stuff, especially after finding out my dad was a handyman and I used to help him as a teenager, so I am very handy. Of course I decline.

His wife keeps volunteering him to help.

Here is the problem, since I avoid them they have taken to telling my wife about issues with their house who then volunteers my time.

I went along with it once after clearly telling her never to do that again and to tell them to hire a professional.

Issue is after doing it once it opened the floodgate and my wife apologetically told me she volunteered my time again.

I did it again, this time telling her it is the last time and next time she can do it herself. When I am home I want to spend time with her and the kids, perhaps invite a friend or two since I rarely get to see them anymore, not helping these lazy people too cheap to hire a professional.

His wife volunteered his time again!

You can see where this is going.

She volunteered my time again, giving me the details.

This time I told her “Good luck with that.”

She didn’t seem to get the point, but I just went upstairs to play with the kids.

His wife is really mad at him.

The following day she woke me up all upset that I had not helped the neighbors and they were mad at her.

I told her I didn’t care and told her I was not doing it full stop.

I am now getting the silent treatment and she is clearly panicking.

Thing is, I know she has a hard time saying no and she likes to be liked, but yeah, I feel bad but I do not want my time volunteered. Am I a jerk?

I don’t think his wife is really friends with the neighbors. They’re just being nice to her so she’ll ask her husband to help them for free. She needs to stop volunteering his time.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This person is on the husband’s side.

His wife needs to respect his boundaries.

The wife really shouldn’t care so much what the neighbors think.

Everyone is on the husband’s side.

Family is more important than neighbors.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.