A woman has received support from viewers online after she shared why she stopped cooking for her husband, despite it being something she used to enjoy.
The woman had taken to Reddit to detail that she had stopped making lunches for her husband due to the actions of his younger colleague. Her post, shared on August 7 under u/playful-rub-3791, has been upvoted more than 13,000 times, with many viewers backing her stance that her husband’s “work wife” had crossed too many boundaries.
“Me and my husband have been married for three years,” the 27-year-old wrote. “He recently got a promotion in his company and moved to a different department. In this department, he recently started interacting with [a 24-year-old woman].
“I dislike her and have from the start.”
The woman revealed that the younger colleague frequently refers to her husband as her “work husband”—something that she took badly. The situation escalated when her husband began bringing home uneaten lunches she had prepared for him, after opting to eat the lunches his colleague had started making for him instead.
Tensions heightened when the woman found out her husband had thrown away the food she had woken up early to prepare for him.
“I woke up at 6 a.m. just to make him his favorite food,” the woman wrote. “But ever since then, this has been happening every day. It’s started to get annoying.
“Till today I decided not to make him lunch.”
Seth Eisenberg, president and CEO of the Practical Application of Intimate Relationship Skills (PAIRS) Foundation, provided his professional interpretation of the situation.
“This is a delicate situation that taps into deeper feelings of respect, boundaries, and communication within the marriage,” he told Newsweek. “The wife’s feelings are understandable; she’s put effort into supporting her husband by preparing his meals, and now feels unappreciated and perhaps even replaced by this other colleague.”
Eisenberg emphasized the importance of her husband acknowledging his wife’s emotions and for the pair to move past this difficult period.
“Feeling hurt or jealous in this context is normal, as the ‘work husband’ dynamic and the actions of the colleague can seem intrusive and disrespectful to the boundaries of the marriage,” he said. “It’s not just about the food. It’s about what the food represents—care, love, and support—and feeling that this is being overshadowed or undervalued.”
Despite the wife’s attempts to communicate her feelings, her concerns were dismissed, leading to further frustration. When her husband clocked that she had stopped making his meals and questioned her on the missing lunch, she responded that she didn’t make one because it was going to waste anyway, sparking a tense argument.
“He started arguing that I was being petty over a little thing,” the woman wrote. “But I tried to discuss how I felt and he went over it.”
Eisenberg highlighted the need for both partners to feel heard and validated.
“The husband’s response, labeling her feelings as ‘petty,’ might reflect a lack of understanding of the deeper emotional impact this situation is having on his wife,” he said.
The relationship expert suggested that a healthy way forward would involve revisiting the conversation with a focus on open and non-judgmental communication.
“It might help if the wife expressed her feelings using ‘I’ statements, such as ‘I feel hurt and unappreciated when you accept food from your colleague, especially when I’ve made the effort to prepare meals for you.’ This approach emphasizes her emotions rather than accusing or blaming, which could help the husband better understand her perspective,” he said.
Discussing and agreeing on boundaries regarding interactions with colleagues is also crucial, especially when they start to affect the marriage. Eisenberg pointed out that the husband needs to reflect on whether this “work husband” relationship is appropriate and if it’s impacting his marriage negatively.
In the meantime, viewers online have largely supported the woman’s defiant stance to withdraw her packed lunches and have criticized her husband’s approach.
One Reddit user said: “Who is hugging on their coworker in front of their significant other (or at all) in the first place? I think you need to sit down and have a real frank conversation with your husband. Because if the shoe was on the other foot, he would not like you doing any of this.”
Another user wrote: “The food isn’t the issue here clearly. I think in plain words you need to tell your husband that you don’t want him interacting with her at all unless it’s required for business and only as minimum as necessary. Her behavior from consistently cooking for him to calling him her ‘work husband’ and giving him tight hugs are extremely inappropriate. He should not be more worried about hurting a coworker’s feelings than disrespecting his marriage.”
“Your husband is an idiot and opening himself up to complaints if he has any sort of seniority and makes preferential decisions regarding this friend. It doesn’t take much effort for those around them to extrapolate extra tight hugs into they’re having an affair via office gossip,” a third user shared.
Newsweek reached out to u/playful-rub-3791 for more information via Reddit.
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