A woman whose fiancé expects her to cook Thanksgiving dinner for more than 20 of his relatives has taken to Reddit to vent.
She said that over the past four years she has been “single-handedly” cooking and hosting Thanksgiving for his massive family, but she doesn’t want to this year as she hasn’t been well and has never been thanked for her efforts over the previous years.
Since telling her fiancé, he hasn’t spoken to her.
Posting on the Am I The A**hole subreddit, she explained that she typically hosts his family for both Thanksgiving and Christmas, while her partner typically just “babysits a brisket in the smoker”.
She said she begins to prepare the night before, and spends the whole morning and afternoon cooking. When the time comes to sit down and enjoy the meal, she is often too exhausted to enjoy the food.
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Last year she asked his relatives to bring one side dish or dessert to alleviate her burden, but no one brought anything.
She said no one has thanked her for her efforts each year they have hosted, and she never even has enough leftovers to enjoy the following day.
When she told her partner that this year, she has no intentions of cooking, he hit back with “but that’s our tradition”, “can’t you at least make some boxed stuffing or something”, and “everyone is planning on coming”.
She told him if he wanted to host, he can cater. He hasn’t spoken to her since.
Providing context, she said she hasn’t been well recently and just finished up an eight-month course of rough medication. She said she’s been achy and miserable, and tends to feel stiff is she overworks herself.
She is flirting with the idea of sitting out Thanksgiving completely this year, and buying a single-serving Thanksgiving dinner for herself instead.
In an update, she said her partner found the Reddit post and “now apparently we’re cancelling everything”.
The top comment, with over 18,000 upvotes, suggests she has “some conversations” before marrying her partner. They wrote: “If your fiancé is not considerate of what you need versus what he and his family wants and also not pulling his weight now, will he as a partner when you’re married?
“An important distinction is that you did not say ‘we can’t host a dinner.’ You said ‘you need to be the one to do it this year if you want it because I’m tired’ and he balked.”
Another commenter suggested that if it’s “so important” to her fiancé, he should do it himself while the Redditor enjoys a week at a hotel or at a friend’s house.
“I bet they leave you to clean everything up too,” another wrote. The original poster replied and said: “They sure do. I was seriously considering serving dinner on paper plates last year for this exact reason.”
When asked if her partner realises how much work she puts into hosting every year, she said he “absolutely knows” and that they have talked about it twice.
She added: “At this point I absolutely don’t care for plans everyone else made on my behalf without my input.”
Sadly this isn’t the first row we’ve seen in which a couple has clashed over cooking duties. A few months ago, we wrote about a woman who wrote of how her husband told her to “just do [her] job” when she wasn’t cooking fast enough for him and his guests.
