One woman on Reddit had no idea she was touching a nerve when she decided to ask her father to fix their broken washing machine. I mean, it had to get fixed. But according to her husband, this was grounds for a full-blown fight, and now he’s accusing her of making him feel like less of a man.
Her husband has never been handy — but that hardly matters to her.
In a post on the Am I the A—hole forum, the Original Poster shared that her husband is an “excellent provider,” but “he is useless with anything hands on.”
Like one time when her husband went to fix one of the car headlights and when she went out an hour later, he had the bumper off and was working on a side panel.
“He had missed the two bolts that hold the headlamp in place,” she wrote. “It was sad and cute at the same time.”
It goes without saying, the OP takes care of things around the house.
But now that she’s eight months pregnant, it’s getting a little harder to play handyman.
“This week our washer machine broke,” she explained. “I couldn't fit behind it to do anything because of my stomach.”
Instead, she called her father to fix it right up.
“This is the first time I have had to do this since we got married,” she added.
Just as her dad was finishing the job, her husband came home from work.
And her husband completely flipped his lid. He told her it was one thing for the OP to walk around like the man of the house, but by calling her dad “I am telling everyone he can't take care of his wife.”
She tried to explain that this was “not the case” but he was too upset, took their car, and left.
The next day she got a call from her mother-in-law, who told her that her husband was “breaking down at her place.”
He apparently told his mom that she just uses him to pay for things “and nothing more.”
“And that instead of calling my dad I should have walked him through how to fix his washer machine,” she recalled. “Now he won't come home ‘til I admit I am emasculating him and apologize for trying to be the man of the house.”
But she’s torn. If she had tried to walk her husband through fixing the machine, “it would have taken longer and it would have cut into his free time.”
Was she really so wrong for trying to get the job done?
Some people thought there was nothing less manly than complaining to your mom.
"Um, he threw a tantrum and went crying home to mommy," one person pointed out. "He's doing just fine emasculating himself."
"I was just thinking this lol," agreed someone else. "Can you even imagine the temper tantrum? 'Mooooom, I want to fix stuff, I am a big man now but she is acting like the man of the house and fixes everything before I get a chance! Tell her I feel emasculated by her.'”
"He is projecting his own insecurities onto you — that's nor fair, nor is it your fault!" chimed in a third commenter.
Other people thought her husband deserved to feel manly.
"If [he] wants to take on the role of fixing stuff because it makes him feel like the man, let him do it. How would you feel if you felt like you wanted to be the one to do all the cooking, and he called his mom to come cook dinner when you planned to? Wouldn't feel good, would it?" one commenter wrote.
One person thought they should be more of a team, writing this:
"If anything goes wrong in the house, he should be informed and a discussion should be had before you call your father. You're supposed to be a team, not a single mother in charge of everything. He's working and providing — that's half of what it takes and when you start to feel that it's ALL you are, a lot of resentment can build up.
"You don't need to apologize for being the 'man,' but you two need some therapy and you need to learn to communicate with one another. This isn't a one off incident, this is something that's been brewing for awhile and has a whole lot to do with his anxiety over being a new father."
Someone else suggested having a little more empathy. "You call your Dad / neighbor / secret lover when you have been nagging your husband to fix something for ages and he keeps putting it off. You do that because men hate having another guy coming in on their turf and showing them up.
"Nothing gets your husband fixing something faster than the threat of that call," the person continued. "You don’t call someone else in when your husband is perfectly willing to help and just needs to be taught. It is not his fault that his parents failed to teach him life skills. Your husband sounds sweet for trying so hard to look after you."
But in our opinion, one commenter said it best: “This dude needs to get over himself.”
