Wife Becomes Mad at Husband for Taking Kids to Get Food After She Cooked Meal

A husband says his wife “flipped out” when he took their children out to get dinner after she had already cooked a meal for them.

The husband detailed the ordeal in a post on Reddit‘s “Am I the A——?” forum, explaining that he went to pick up the couple’s 3- and 5-year-old kids from daycare on a night when his wife was taking their 12-year-old to a practice. The two younger children were hungry, so the husband took them out to dinner instead of going home.

“Once at the restaurant, I saw a text from my wife that she had made [the kids] plates before she left the house. It was too late to change plans so we stayed and ate,” the husband wrote in his post. “The dinner she had made was pretty basic, but it was dinner nonetheless.”

When the trio returned home, the husband told his wife that he saw her text about the dinner plates “just a few minutes too late” and that they had gone ahead and eaten out. “She flipped out on me for ‘wasting her time,’ ” the man continued. “I told her I didn’t intend to waste her time, but that didn’t matter — what I did was ‘rude.’ ”

The husband asked fellow Redditors to weigh in on whether he was wrong to “take [the] kids out to dinner when my wife had left food out for them.”

The post received more than 1,000 comments, with the majority of people siding with the wife on the issue and calling out the husband’s “lack of communication.”

“‘What are we doing for dinner’ is a discussion pretty much every family has, pretty much every day, especially once kids start doing afterschool activities. If you don’t currently do that, perhaps you should start,” someone wrote, adding, “This feels a lot like you just wanted to treat your kids and didn’t care about what was planned at home.”

Another person argued, “Communication is the bare minimum in a partnership. If I was out with my kids around dinner time and dinner plans were unclear, I’d give my wife a quick call first and discuss it.”

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One other person chimed in: “It would have taken you 2 seconds to text your wife and tell her your plans before heading to the restaurant. Planning logistics to feed everyone constantly sucks. I get annoyed when plans change suddenly like that, especially after I’ve already begun cooking.”

Some commenters also accused the husband of showing a lack of appreciation for his wife’s efforts in preparing the home-cooked meal.

“You don’t value her time or contributions to your family. You just wanted to eat what you were craving, and you got to be the ‘fun dad’ while doing it,” a Redditor wrote.

One woman shared her own experience as she came to the wife’s defense. “As a married lady with 4 kids, dinners don’t just magically appear. There is planning, shopping, preparing and cook,” she commented. “Maybe this was a missed communication incident, but nothing makes me feel less appreciated than when I’ve gone to all that trouble.”

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Yet another person added, “I suggest you cook more dinners and you will soon value your wife’s time when she and the kids don’t show up. Labeling it as basic is you undermining her effort — even a quick dinner is 30 mins prep, cooking and cleaning, and I’m sure she’d have appreciated a restaurant meal herself rather than doing that for nothing. Don’t be surprised if she suddenly stops cooking!”

One commenter, meanwhile, offered some advice on how the husband might be able to smooth things over with his upset wife.

“This is actually quite easy to resolve, I believe. By simply changing the way you approach things, you can reduce the conflict between you two,” they wrote. “For example, inform your wife immediately after making the decision to go out to eat and explain to her why you’re doing it. Or pack some desserts to bring home for her to thank her for her efforts the night you return. Or make dinner the next day as a gesture of apology.”