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Basic needs should come before luxury food.
By Jonathan Alfano — Written on Apr 13, 2022
In wedding vows, two partners reaffirm their love for one another through the best and worst of times.
“Do you promise to love and cherish her/him, in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, for richer for poorer, for better for worse, and forsaking all others, keep yourself only unto her/him, for so long as you both shall live?” traditional wedding vows read.
By saying “I do” to these words, one commits themselves to always being there for their partner, no matter how hard external circumstances make it.
Nowhere in those vows does it say that one should be treating themselves while their partner and kids are struggling to keep food on the table.
A woman on Reddit recently saw her husband do just that when her family and kids were in a very rough spot. She posted about what happened on the subreddit r/TrueOffMyChest, which describes itself as “a place for people who need to speak their mind.”
The woman says that she, 26, and her husband, 29, have been together for seven years now and have three children. She says that the family has lived comfortably, but fell on hard times recently after a broken ankle prevented her from working her job as a server. She is the biggest source of income for her family, so her injury meant they were relying solely on her husband’s income.
With much less money to work with, the family has been relying on pantries and churches to get food. In some cases, her husband has had to borrow money from his boss to stock the pantry as much as they can.
They had agreed that he would bring home dinner if he couldn’t make it to the store after work, and it had been going well. However, this day was different.
One day, the husband chose to use his boss’ borrowed money to buy Chick-Fil-A for himself, but not for his wife and kids.
The woman was furious at her husband for not picking anything up for the rest of the family, who had very limited options for food until they could go shopping at the end of the week. When she confronted him about it, he said “if I’m the only one working I deserve a treat when I want one. There’s eggs, tuna, soup & bread in the kitchen.” He also said she should “portion better” for her and the kid’s meals.
Needless to say, she didn’t take his comments very well.
“I told him that he was a d**k and in no way is it fair to come home with a full meal for himself knowing the kids and I didn’t have other options,” she writes.
She concludes her post by saying that her husband left to spend the night at his mother’s because he “needs space.” She adds that she has been on the other side of the situation before, and she has never done this to him or the kids.
Commenters said that the woman should be as mad as she is at her husband. They said he was being selfish and his priorities were not what they should have been. Some even called on her to reconsider her relationship with him.
“It's ok to treat yourself every now and again,” the top commenter wrote. “But not when your family is struggling to keep food in the pantry. If your wife and kids are eating tuna sandwiches 3x a week then you eat it too.”
If someone is placing that much effort into treating himself over providing basic needs for his family, then maybe they aren’t fit to be a family man in the first place.
Jonathan Alfano is a writer who focuses on news and entertainment topics. He majors in journalism at the University of Central Florida with a minor in sports business. Follow him on Twitter.