Wife Says Entire Neighborhood ‘Borrows’ Her Husband & It’s Getting Inappropriate

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Helping out a neighbor in need is something we should all strive to do. Communities need to care for one another, but that doesn't give anyone carte blanche to take advantage of help.

A wife recently asked Reddit if she was being selfish to wanting her husband to stop helping out neighborhood women with their small maintenance tasks because he's literally the only man around to do it.

The woman began explaining that on her street, her husband was literally the only male — they are surrounded by single women, single moms, young moms, and even one lesbian couple.

"I normally wouldn't care or even take note of this, but since March, it's like we're getting constant calls and texts," she wrote. "The number we gave when we moved in two years ago (just renewed last January) was my number. I am flooded with requests for basic handyman stuff like changing light bulbs, car problems, and dealing with toilets."

And she added that her husband feels pressure to step up and help these women.

"He has helped people around the neighborhood before because he is a nice guy and we are from a culture that assumes that men need to 'help out' women if they can, even if they're not related," she further explained. "But with me being furloughed, he's the only one working and is less interested in extra stuff, but the tasks do only take about 5-20 minutes on average, which I know because my husband makes me go with him because they make him uncomfortable."

What makes the situation even weirder is that all of these women are seemingly obsessed with him.

"They openly flirt with him and literally offer themselves up if he's 'ever tired of me' or 'wants something different,'" she claimed. "I have even gotten pictures of boobs from neighbors! While I love my husband and am attracted to him, he's not like a male model or anything so I really don't understand why these women are fawning over him like this. One of the single moms has even asked him to come over and discipline one of her children, which is an absolute nope."

Her husband has gotten extremely uncomfortable and asked his wife to intervene.

Not so shockingly, it went south pretty quickly.

"I've tried talking to these women more casually to no avail," she said. "I set up a Zoom for just us ladies to try to get us on the same page. They told me that since it's now impossible for any of them to find anyone anymore (2020), I needed to share my husband and be less selfish in regards to household maintenance requests. It's 'not even safe' to call for maintenance and I shouldn't ask them to when there's a 'safe alternative' where they don't have to risk exposure. They also said that it was just 'harmless flirting' because they're all 'frustrated and can't date' and that I wouldn't even be threatened by it if I was 'giving him kids.'"

Whew that's a lot to unpack.

What's making this woman question if she's overreacting or not is that her family seems weirdly on the side of the neighborhood women.

"I've talked to my own family about this and while they say that the women should be less forward, I should be more understanding about how hard it is for a woman to be alone because my own mother was alone," she added

So now she's basically looking for an internet sanity check on whether or not she's in the wrong for telling these women to back off.

Redditors were generally floored at the lack of boundaries and basic life skills.

"These grown women should learn how to complete basic home maintenance themselves, wrote one user. "Start sending YouTube videos to them instead of your husband."

And a few others thought that not only were these women weird, but her husband was out of line too.

"How did this suddenly become your job," asked another reader. "Why are you setting up a Zoom call for all these women? Why are you filtering their messages and answering their calls? No wonder these women don't stop doing what they're doing if it's you who tells them to stop and not your husband. He really needs to stand up for himself and say no to these women."

Overall, people advised them to both put their respective feet down.

"You both need to start telling them 'no.'" one person flat-out wrote. "You don't need to get them to agree that they're out of line, you just have to say 'Sorry, can't help.' Or, if you don't feel comfortable doing that, could you show up to help? None of things they need help with requires a penis to do."

We hope these two can establish some space and learn how to make their boundaries crystal clear.