Everyone has little routines that help them unwind after a long day.

For some people, it’s a hot shower. For others, it’s reading a book or scrolling through their phone for a few minutes.

For this man, it involves grabbing takeout food after football training, sitting down in front of the TV, and enjoying a little peace and quiet before bed.

Unfortunately, though, his girlfriend has a habit of turning that quiet time into something else.

Now he’s wondering whether he’s overreacting or if his frustration is actually justified.

Read on to see what’s been happening.

AITA for getting irritated that my girlfriend keeps eating food directly off my plate after football training?

Twice a week, I have football training in the evenings. By the time I’m driving home, it’s late, I’m exhausted, socially drained, and starving.

On the way home, I always stop at the same kebab shop and get food. I then sit in the living room eating it while zoning out and watching some mindless TV. It’s basically my decompression routine after training.

My girlfriend is normally asleep when I get home, but every single time I come in with takeaway, she wakes up and comes into the living room.

He gets low-key annoyed by the whole thing.

She’ll go, “Oh wow, what did you get? That smells so good”

Then she sits beside me, starts talking to me, and casually starts taking chips or bits of kebab directly off my plate.

The thing is, it irrationally annoys me because I’m genuinely looking forward to just quietly eating my food and switching my brain off for 20 minutes.

Frustrated, he tried to prevent it from happening again.

Last time, I actually tried to solve the problem in advance by calling her before I got home and asking if she wanted me to pick her up food too. She said no.

I thought that would finally stop this from happening.

Instead, I got home and, within minutes, she was beside me again eating chips directly off my plate.

He finally had to tell her to back off.

I finally told her, “If you want food, just take your portion off my plate and leave me alone for a bit.”

She got quiet after that and later said I was being weirdly hostile over “a few chips.”

From my perspective, it’s not really about the chips. It’s that I feel like my tiny post-training decompression ritual keeps getting invaded when I’m tired and overstimulated.

AITA?

Yikes! It’s easy to see both sides of this, but many people would find that annoying.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a man whose friends say he’s privileged for wanting to eat at nicer restaurants.

Let’s see what the readers over at Reddit think about it.

This woman’s husband also likes time alone after work.

According to this comment, he’s allowed to have alone time.

Here’s someone who finds her behavior rude.

And this reader won’t even be friends with someone who does that.

He isn’t wrong for wanting a little time to himself after training.

After all, he’s not asking for much. He just wants to eat his food, watch some TV, and decompress for a few minutes before bed.

But the good news is now that he has finally said something, she should have a much better understanding of where he’s coming from. And going forward, she can order her own food and let him have a little space.

Ultimately, this feels more like a misunderstanding than a serious problem, and a little communication can go a long way before things become unnecessarily tense.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a person who abandoned their own D&D campaign when their friends stopped paying attention.