When his wife’s car battery first died during a brutal -30°C cold snap, he took a look and figured it was just the extreme weather. The battery didn’t show obvious signs of damage, and it survived the rest of winter without issue, so he felt confident telling her it was “probably fine.”

Months later, another deep freeze hit…and the battery died again. This time, there may even be additional issues after the jump-start. Now she says his earlier reassurance gave her a false sense of security…and he’s wondering if he misjudged the situation or if he’s just the convenient person to blame.

Read on for the story.

AITA for telling my wife her car is probably fine when the problem eventually turned out to be recurring

My wife considers me to be disorganized.

She’s not entirely wrong about that, but quite frequently if something goes wrong, and it is in any way due to a judgement of mine then it is treated as a sign of my disorganization or poor judgement.

I’d like a second opinion on whether I showed poor judgement in this case or if I was being an overconfident a******.

Oh boy.

Earlier this year, on the first -30 degrees Celsius (~ -22 deg F) day of the year, her car’s battery died. She told me she’d have the mechanic look at it after we got her car running again from jumping it.

I know a few basic things about car batteries, like looking for visual signs of corrosion, that they don’t do well in cold temperatures, and of course that they age.

I said her battery looked fine, honestly on visual inspection it looked better than mine. It was a particular cold day. Sure she could have it looked at by a mechanic but it was probably fine.

*Shrugs.*

During the polar vortex this year her battery held up fine.

Today, we had another -30 deg C day and her battery died again. This time, when we jumped it, there seems to now be a problem with the blow motor (AC fan) – possibly a relay tripped by the car-jumping process.

It is remarkably bad timing though this time, and we don’t know if there is anything else wrong with the car.

Yikes.

She blames me because my optimism she feels lulled her into a false sense of security that her battery was fine.

My feeling though is that: (i) when I said it, it was the first time she’d ever had to get her car jumped, (ii) the car made it through the polar vortex fine so obviously the battery wasn’t that bad, and (iii) the new (possibly relay) problem is not something I could have predicted, and which the mechanic might not have even predicted being the consequence of jumping the car, so again, not bad judgement to not expect it.

Am I talking out of my a**, or did I make a reasonable judgement call & it is being used to blame me just because I was there when something went wrong?

The debate boils down to this: was he reasonably assessing the situation with the information he had at the time, or was he overconfident and dismissive of a potential problem?

This person says it’s her car so she’s responsibile.

This person runs through all the basics, and still ends up NTA.

And this person agrees with all.

When a battery dies twice, the real spark isn’t in the engine, it’s in the blame game afterward.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.