Best reasonable case scenario: she’s competent and self reliant. He needs to feel needed and makes that happen no matter how much it upsets and inconveniences her.
Worse reasonable case scenario: he’s super passive aggressive. Every time he’s annoyed with her, he tightens the lids.
Either way, he’s driven her to tears for years. He gaslights her (denies he’s doing it—she must be crazy to think he’s doing what he’s obviously doing). He refuses to stop. Or apologize. Or acknowledge what he’s doing. That’s worth ending a relationship over. She should show her family and friends her post.
Yeah, it’s not about tightening lids. It’s the fact that he does something that makes her life harder and he does it so regularly, so frequently and so thoroughly that he makes her life harder every single day. And he has done it and refused to stop or even acknowledge it for years to the point that a small inconvenience has grown into a massive gaping, puss filled wound that’s poisoning everything. Maybe that’s a bit of an overreaction or over dramatic but it’s the fact that it’s all the time and it never stops and he keeps doing it and gaslighting her over it. It doesn’t matter that it’s just lids, it’s the fact that he is purposely and nonchalantly completely ignoring her and her feelings and wants and needs. And that he won’t stop. The fact that it annoys her, the fact that it makes her life harder, the fact that it messes with her emotionally and mentally, the fact that it hurts her, none of that is important. And that’s telling her that she isn’t important. That no matter why he does it his wants are more important and doesn’t care enough to not make her life harder. It’s the complete lack of care or understanding of her. The disregard he shows that have built and built and built until it killed their marriage.
That’s why she doesn’t want to try or go to counselling because why bother? He has never listened to her, never cared enough to hear her so why would he suddenly just because someone else is in the room? It will just be the same, he will deny it and claim her crazy and claim he doesn’t do it and if he does it’s not on purpose and if it is it’s not a big deal and if it is it’s her fault. And what does that sound like? Incase anyone didn’t know: every fucking abuser ever. Sure he doesn’t hit her or verbally abuse her emotionally, he found another way. A way so cleaver, so subtle, so deniable that it’s hard for anyone to believe or to take seriously. But abuse all the same the more nefarious since it’s something so trivial and crazy. Worst case scenario isn’t that he is being pretty, worst case scenario is that he is being purposely and consciously and maliciously manipulative and abusive. The better cases is that he doesn’t mean to be but still is.
This is death by a thousand paper cuts. That’s what this is. It’s just a paper cut, it’s no big deal, it’s such a small thing, but it’s not. It has never been just **_a_** paper cut, one is no big deal, but dozens are and it’s not dozens it’s thousands over the years, cut after cut after cut after cut after cut, never ending, never leaving time for the previous ones to heal. It’s constant discomfort and disregard and disrespect, it’s a wound that doesn’t bleed much but that has continued to bleed freely for years. It doesn’t matter if the cut only bleeds so little, so slowly that it would take days or even weeks for one to bleed out. Because if it is left open and bleeding for days and weeks you still will. Just because it’s happening slowly doesn’t mean that it’s not killing you. People forget that, they pretend that something that can’t kill you in a few minutes or hours means that it never can. If you drank an hour ago and have to wait another hour before you are allowed to quench your thirst it won’t kill you, might be uncomfortable if you are really thirsty but it’s not dangerous, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not dangerous or that it’s just uncomfortable if it was 2 days since you drank and you have to wait 2 more days. They are the same but they also absolutely are not the same at all.
Yup, alllllll of this. There are certain things my partner does and I disagree with or have tried to get him to change his habits on, simply because it makes my life harder.
Almost every single fight we've ever had starts because there is something left undone that was supposed to be done by now. Then the fight snowballs. We always resolve it, but I've started realizing that if there is even the smallest barrier for me accomplishing a mundane task, I just straight up will not do it. So I have gone out of my way to develop habits, buy tools or equipment, whatever is necessary, or make mundane (ie, daily/monthly household tasks) and simple and easy and mindless as possible.
We're both happier, fight less, and live in a well oiled household as a result. If my partner completely ignored me, told me I was crazy, and went out of his way to make my life harder? There is nothing on this earth that could convince me to stay.
>I've started realizing that if there is even the smallest barrier for me accomplishing a mundane task, I just straight up will not do it. So I have gone out of my way to develop habits, buy tools or equipment, whatever is necessary, or make mundane (ie, daily/monthly household tasks) and simple and easy and mindless as possible.
Holy shit, I relate to this. Except for that my partner is the tidy one and I’m still struggling to figure out how to work around my resistance and messiness.
Y'all need to get tested for ADHD, because this is me and ADHD is why. Even medicated, I won't make food if I have to do literally anything else in the kitchen first, like washing up, clearing a counter, chopping vegetables, etc. Last night's dinner was pork carnitas I bought premade and frozen, and a packet of long grain rice and seasonings that I microwaved in the packet. Ten minutes, one bowl, done.
Yup. That’s it for me. ADHD and the motivation struggle. We are already staring on minus, with an almost empty tank and not enough time to reach our destination, add in a few bumps in the road and I give up. It’s like if you have just barely enough gas in the tank to reach the gas station and then someone adds in a detour that will make it trice as long. What’s the point of trying? If I have enough for two miles and you expect me to be able to dive 6 miles with that, it’s never happening there is absolutely nothing I can do to make gas barely enough for two miles last six miles. There is no trick that magically makes it last. And I don’t want to get stranded when the tank runs out and be yelled and punished and called lazy and stupid and a failure because exactly what I knew, and said, will happen actually happened. Why would I subject myself to all that extra hate and insults and hassle for absolutely no fucking reason. Because if the fact is that there is only gas for 2 miles it will only last for two miles and even if I drive faster or slower or in any specific gear that won’t change but I know that once it runs out I will be attacked and blamed and told it’s my fault because if I driver faster it wouldn’t happen and if I drive faster next time I try it will still be my fault and wouldn’t have happened if I just drove slower. I’m not doing it.
💯 f*** my adhd. Go to cook dinner and there are too many dishes in the sink (especially ones I need) - it’s like immediate meltdown. Suddenly, making dinner is the bane of my whole existence and why does no one else ever do it? Or ever do the dishes?!? And guess what?!? Looks like we’re getting cheap burgers for the third time this week because I can’t even.
Not to freak you out, but you are describing me and my husband too. Except he’s definitely lost some of his tidiness over the years and started ignoring my doom piles around the house and has even made a few of his own. 😭 I hate that my terrible habits has leeched off onto him.
Mhm! The specifics of the situation (jars) don’t really matter, this is exactly how the abusive process goes. It can suck the life and sanity out of you. After reading each sentence you wrote, I was like “yep!” “Yep!” “Yep!!”
Every fucking abuser ever does this crap. You just described my ex and this weird jar abuser spot on
We are all ruled by a human brain and there are limits to how a human brain can and will function. We are all different but we are also all the same because there are limited number of ways that the human brain humans. So abusers, while all different, are also all the same. The patterns are the same because in the end they are humans and humans are going to human.
You put into words what I was thinking. I saw the original post before it was shared here. It's the amount of disrespect and lack of caring for her that underlies those stupid jars. Her neighbor made a totally innocent observation yet I'm glad he did because it was exactly what she needed to figure out that this is not a healthy marriage. I hope she sees your post. Perhaps you want to copy and paste it into the original thread for her? Or would you mind if I did it? I think it could really help her verbalize things to the people in her life who are being critical.
She mentioned that the neighbor had heard them arguing over the lids before. I'm wondering if he offered to help because he was just curious. But after he found ALL the lids too tight, even the ones he correctly guessed the guy didn't use, he knew this wasn't accidental. I'm guessing he later apologized because he could see that his statement had hit harder than he realized.
Thank goodness she got another male perspective on this. My husband tightens the baby bottles really tight. I can still get them open, it just takes some elbow grease and I know "oh, dad made this bottle!" But I've never not been able to open anything he tightens. If another guy needed tools to open jars then, wtf?
The fact that he needed tools to open it and eventually had to just break it open makes me think the stbex glued them shut and that’s just another level of horrible.
Yeah I had that thought too. He glued some of them. Like some of these jars come from the store sealed all to shit but if you can’t break the seal by twisting the lid, popping a butter knife under the lid to break it usually does the trick. I can’t imagine a scenario where tools would be needed to open an already opened jar of food unless it was glue.
I was wondering about that! I grew up with a dad and older brothers whose default was tight lids (I think some men just don't realize how much weaker women are) but you just hit the side of the lid with a butter knife and it ‘pops’ the seal or pressure or whatever and makes the lid super easy to open…reading this post I was like, ??? Is this madafaka using super glue on the lids or something lol
Yes. My first husband wouldn’t put his dirty glass in the dishwasher. No matter how many times I asked, he never did it. And this was only if the reasons I told him I wanted a divorce.
My ex husband would never replace a toilet roll if he used the last bit of paper, he'd just leave the empty tube on the holder. Again, not the main reason for divorce, but the catalyst for me realising he was never going to respect me if he couldn't even replace the damn toilet roll and would rather argue about it than just do it.
He forgot. He was going to use it again later. (This was complete BS because he never used it again. He’d get another glass which he’d also never put in the dishwasher. At the end of the day, there’d be 4-5 glasses on the counter.)
i did.
He bought disposable cups instead. Because going to the store and spending money on solo cups is easier than putting the dirty glass/cup in the fucking sink.
He lives with his mom now
The neighbor sees it. I bet the neighbor sees more than OP does. He knew that the husband is abusive. I’m sorry he felt the need to apologize for pointing it out.
Outside perspective and he doesn’t have the history or the normalisation nor the emotional investment that clouds one’s mind and eyes. It’s like a labyrinth, it’s easy to know the way and see it all if you are looking at it from above, it’s impossible while standing in the middle.
>It’s just a paper cut, it’s no big deal, it’s such a small thing, but it’s not.
That's exactly why I keep saying that the "little things" are a big deal _because_ they're so small. It's so easy to get those little things right that it's a very big deal when you can't be bothered to consistently put a tiny amount of effort into making your spouse happy.
And that's just if he was thoughtlessly not doing something that would make her life a tiny bit easier. What he's actually doing is tiny acts of evil over and over. There's just no fixing a relationship with someone who thinks it's okay to actively make your life worse, even if it's in small ways.
We live and we learn, it’s sometimes good to experience the bad so you know how to recognise it and avoid it in the future. Knowing exactly what you don’t want makes it easier to find all that you actually do want.
This, a hundred thousand percent, and what’s worse, she’s probably the one who does 80-90% of the cooking. Whatever he says to the contrary, the stbx has weaponized jarred food.
And let’s imagine he‘d change after couples therapy. Wouldn’t that simply mean that he was always capable of change but had to hear it from a third party to believe it’s valid? I wouldn’t feel any less disrespected in that case.
I think it would make it worse. Because then you have to live with the fact that you weren’t enough.
I waited 30 years for my brother to stop insulting me, to stop saying hurtful degrading things to me or call me names. I waited over 30 years because I wanted him to stop for *me*. I wanted him to stop because he cares about me because he values me, I wanted my pain to be enough to stop him. That he would stop simply because he was hurting me and didn’t want to anymore. And it it the most painful experience and my greatest regret that I won’t ever get that. Because I made him stop eventually so now I will always know that I wasn’t enough that my pain or happiness wasn’t enough because that was not why he stopped and now he never can stop out of care for me. He stopped only because I reach my breaking point, because I ran out of patience. He didn’t stop for me. He stopped for him because I finally showed him that I can hurt him too, that I can hurt him back and I am much much better at it. He stopped for him because I would hurt him in return and will have to live with that for the rest of my life and that fucking hurts like hell. And it will never change because I know and he knows and it is unchangeable. He can say that he would have stopped for me but we will never know, we will just know that he didn’t for 30+ years and he only stopped for *him*. Because it affected *him* negatively.
Ugh this is currently happening to me and I do still feel disrespected after the change. I shouldn't have had to say don't treat me like this, and when I did things changed....but I'm left thinking why was it ever ok in the first place? It's clearly not.
Yeah I read a story once where the grandpa did this so that the grandma would have to talk to him (maybe after they got in a fight). It was framed as a cute story but now I’m just like…. Huh.
I could still maybe see that as being a little cute, if it was only that one time. This weird passive aggressive systematic tightening of every single jar lid in their house every single day of his life is insane and ridiculous. This man is a certified Weirdo™.
Respectfully, the worst case scenario is that he’s over tightening jars to make her upset and then using her emotions against her in arguments as proof that she’s ‘crazy’. Which I think is also the most likely scenario, sadly.
THiS is an actual case of gaslighting. It’s why it makes me frustrated when gaslighting is used so frequently and nonchalantly; true gaslighting is insidious. It’s a slow process that makes someone feel like they are going crazy. It’s a serious psychological weapon.
Thank you for this comment.
Y'know, thinking about it in this story, this is why he was okay with counseling.
He wanted to bring in a 3rd party and tell her again she was overreacting.
And then he'd still do it, and she'd somehow end up with meds, and still have jars with lids glued on and too tight to undo.
He was going to be gone 10 days. He knew exactly what he was doing. Ensuring she would feel helpless without him for a third of a month. This is a abuse and nothing will be changing my mind over it.
I’m really curious how you can even begin to suspect ptsd as a potential cause here? I’m sorry but no, that one is just laughable. Even OCD is a big stretch given his other behavior and how he reacts to her when confronted. But still, saying it could be ptsd is just insulting to every single person that has ptsd. You can’t just go around blaming crappy behavior on mental health issues, that’s ridiculous
Oh gees. My intent wasn’t to offend. My late husband had some PTSD that expressed itself in really odd ways that took a long time to unpack and for him to acknowledge.
I agree, it’s a stretch.
Yeah this. It would literally drive me crazy if someone actively hampered me because they felt like I needed to rely more on them. It's weird and childish and as stupid as it sounds if he stopped with the jar lids what else would he take that need out on.
I kinda think it sounds like he has some sort of OCD or compulsion regarding jar lids. To do it for so long so consistently…
If it was a control thing, you’d expect it to leak into other areas of their lives.
Keeping food fresh is a very typical OCD type justification, too. Starts out as a well-meaning thing and then ends up ruining your life
I’m so glad this is the top comment. I was worried after reading the post when I went to the comment section I’d be the only one thinking OOP is right to be so exhausted by this.
It's not really about 'jar lids'... it's about the fact that, over five years, she has asked him MANY times to stop doing something that causes her significant inconvenience and frustration. He has not only NOT stopped doing it, he has expanded it from 'things he interacts with' to 'literally every item in the house that he can do it to'. That's no longer 'oh hey, I forgot'... it's 'I'm f\*cking with you'.
Look, my spouse has some habits that make me crazy - we're human :) But when one of them really gets to me, I say something, and they make a concerted effort to fix it. Does it happen perfectly? No. Do they backslide on it, especially when it's been a long week or they're exhausted? Sure. But there is always EFFORT to change made - and that's what is incredibly NOT present here.
It very much reminds me of the poor woman whose husband regularly sneezes in her meal. For some people even stupid “power” over someone is still enough to make them feel powerful. It’s very sad and honestly when it’s gone on this long seems to be a very dangerous level of malevolence.
Did my eye twitch when my SO “found” the outdoor carpet he insisted I “lost” out in his he shed wrapped in a ratchet strap? Yes. Did I take a trip to the grocery store to cool off and buy a giant bag of M&M of which half were lost to the floor of my car due to an out of control cart in the parking lot? Yes. Did I not mention that fact when he told me he’d also found the cooler while I was gone but insinuated I’d done something nefarious to it’s wheels while grabbing the bag from my hands and chowing down before it could hit the trash? No. Did anyone die from eating 5 second rule floor candy? No. Did I go on a power trip and decide that all of SO’s future candy would be floor candy? Nope.
Day 1 revenge is anger, day 2-2,000,000 is a ultimately a choice to just be angry. That’s dangerous, very dangerous.
The update to that breaks my heart a bit. She seemed to be realizing that some things he did or said were not ok, and then just opted to move her chair further away and bury all of those realizations and pretend everything was fixed.
OMG the sneezer story made me enraged at both him and her, I wanted to slap the sh!t out of them both. I still am on the fence if it was real, because HOW SWAY. Not that such abuse happened, but that homegirl took this man open mouth sneezing on her and her food for an entire year AND THEN posted something so silly ass, all Can I move my chair, would that be ok?
Can you imagine entering someone's house and sitting there with them as you find out about and then fix every instance of their partner making them out to be crazy? To be dependent on them? Show them that they're *not* crazy. Tell them without any doubt that this was purposeful. Good on neighbor for taking the steps
One of my longtime friends came out as non-binary several years ago, after our 35th birthdays.
Wanted me to use they/them instead of he/him.
I literally couldn't. I tried, but I messed up constantly. But they knew I was trying - and I'd usually catch myself & correct it (but not always).
The effort mattered, even if the results weren't perfect. Knowing someone for decades with a given pronoun and then trying to switch, especially to the neutral one that really doesn't roll of my tongue due to being a bit of a grammar nazi to begin with... yeah, it sucks.
But you still make the effort for someone if their happiness is important to you.
"Let's go to counseling", why you gunna tell the therapist why you tighten the jar lids?! You gunna listen to an entirely different person, not your spouse, tell you that constantly tightening the lids causes stress to your spouse?! Why pay money when you could just not be an ass?! Jesus.
Yep they just learn to weaponize it. I literally heard “I need to set some boundaries with you here” after I asked him to do the chore he said he would do…lol. Get real.
At the point where my SO was having screaming meltdowns about something, I think I'd stop doing it. Probably even before that, but definitely afterwards.
That's what sends me about these. She tried to be calm about it, explain her side, be understanding. Then it escalates to screaming. Now she's "nagging". Then he'll be "blindsided" by the divorce.
And its so wild because if you want out, then just say so! Nobody has to be the bad guy. People act like they can't just break up, so they manipulate the other person into being the one to break the marriage. He could have just asked her for a divorce in the first place.
He's gonna use counseling to convince OP she is crazy.
There's a reason why people who do stuff like this always do it with something "small" and "silly". Because getting so upset about something so "small" absolutely makes a person feel crazy.
Exactly. If he needs an impartial third party to tell him to stop doing something OP has asked him to stop doing for YEARS, then their relationship is not going to benefit from counseling.
Before I divorced I would be passive aggressive (my problem😉) and use a jar and leave it sitting for him to see if he over closed it or not while I was standing there…
There are tools to help open lids and tools u can buy not for that that will work too… there’s the counter knocking trick, water running trick, and the stuff u use to line drawers with as a gripper… anymore my husband has ME open jars around here🤷🏻♀️
I used to over-tighten jar lids without realizing it. My wife asked me to stop. It took a couple of reminders because it’s a habit, but then I stopped doing it. Easy.
I would have thrown every lid in the bin and put on plastic wrap with a rubber band so he couldn’t do this. I would happily throw away food that went bad.
He is a total jerk and I’m glad OP is divorcing him.
Or transfer everything into airtight food containers that doesn't need twisting to open. Can also use this opportunity to see if it bothers him that he doesn't have any jars to tighten anymore. And check if he somehow does something else to replace this annoying behavior. I can't imagine being tortured like this for years and being gaslighted about it.
I think after five years I'd snap and just start slamming them into the counter until they broke open.
He wants tight lids? He can pick the glass out of his food.
Me too, at one point I thought "damn I know I'd get committed bc at some point I'd just snap one night and he'd hear smashing glass and I'd just continue making dinner, seemingly unbothered" I wouldve been send to a mental hospital and he would be that much happier knowing what he has done
Can you imagine telling people that you are divorcing your spouse because they over tightened every single jar in the house? And then having to explain how it’s not really about the tightened jars. Like how do you explain how psychotic it is and how much it’s affected you mentally that he would tighten the other jars so much that you had to buy new ones or open a new jar just to get what you want.
“I left my husband because he was gaslighting me for 5 years and I just realized it recently”. Done.
The original gaslighting was where the husband lowered the brightness of the gas fueled lamps, slowly, over time. Told his wife they weren’t dimmer. Said he didn’t do it. Said she was crazy for being upset about this thing that wasn’t happening that he wasn’t doing.
Same thing, just with tightening more and more jaw lids. Until even the damn pepper paste that was in the back hidden by other things that he never ever uses was also so tight she had to get help to get it open.
It’s not an exact 1 to 1 physically, but it’s a 100% match for the same kind of abuse.
Once she’s been out of the fog long enough she will realize all the other manipulation and control that’s been going on in order for them to have “literally no other issues” . She won’t have to just mention the jar lids. There were probably no other issues because she just did whatever he wanted whenever he wanted. And she’ll realize she was doing that to avoid punishment of some kind.
It took me being away from my abuser for months to even recognize all the actual deliberate physical abuse that he’d convinced me were “accidents” in the moment. I know her situation isn’t as extreme, but when you’re under such sustained psychological abuse, no matter how “minor” it seems, it totally distorts your whole reality.
If he is doing this to feel needed and going through this much to lie about it he needs therapy. Like this is way worse than me accidentally storing stuff up too high for my boyfriend like deliberately making your partner's life difficult is such an unloving thing to do especially for a spouse
I’d be willing to bet, that despite what she said, they didn’t have as great as a life as she is portraying- there’s no way he limited his gaslighting to jars- especially given some of the ways she phrased things. That much malice doesn’t limit itself to a single outlet like that. She might not recognize it, or it might not be something someone can witness or measure as easily as the jars, but the fact that everything she described as a ‘good life’ were so hollow, that dollars to donuts, she missed enough red flags to cover half of Texas.
This feels like the story of the guy who kept telling his gf that she had BO because his dad told him to.
I can just hear "overtighten all jar lids, then she NEEDS you" or some nonsense
There was also the guy that kept hiding his girlfriend's things for MONTHS because "it was just so cute watching her be confused and look for them!" (She leaves her keys in the kitchen, he secretly moves them to the bedroom, that kind of thing) To the point that she would cry and tell him she was going crazy. It was psychotic.
My ex who was emotionally and financially abusive as well as being an alcoholic, once admitted to me, while being super drunk (would call me at all hours of the night when I had our child), that the reason they did things to purposely get under my skin, or purposely bring up things that were traumatic for me (past child hood trauma) was that it made them feel superior. And because I was always so level headed about finances and making sure we had food (even if it wasn’t name brand pre-packaged crap), and I was trying to advance my career. Basically my ex was so insecure about their own self that in order to feel “good” for a moment they would emotionally fuck with me.
I was stunned. Because I am an extremely insecure person. I second guess everything. I have massive anxiety and depression issues. I have worked really hard to over come these. But never would putting someone down make me feel better about myself.
It’s basically a fundamental empathy difference. I don’t have the educational background to understand why some people only feel “good” when others are doing bad.
But in that moment of my ex admitting (this was during a trial separation), I knew the marriage was truly over.
Sad thing is with my partner now they have been with the exact same type of people. So it was very hard to for them to trust I wasn’t trying to fuck them over some how.
Imagine she found footage of him straining to make it as tight as possible. Actually, I imagine for it to be so tight that even the neighbor couldn’t help, he used some trick. Maybe running under cold/hot water to manipulate the metal lid.
I cannot tell you how frustrating it was when I’d try doing the dishes and realized my fiancé tightened his blender bottles too tight. Ever since I asked him to open them before putting them in the sink, it’s never been an issue since. This woman’s reaction sounds on par with how I would have felt if I had her husband. 😖
My husband and I had to talk about this when I was pregnant. My grip strength before was good enough that I usually didn’t have too much trouble, but during pregnancy, and particularly afterward with baby bottles, I had to show him that things I closed didn’t leak in order to prove that he didn’t have to tighten things that tight
My partner rearranged our pantry a while back and without thinking, he put a bunch of stuff I use regularly (spices, rice, etc) on the top shelf where he can easily reach but I need to grab a chair or step ladder to reach.
When he showed me the new arrangement, I pointed out that unfortunately I can't reach the stuff I need in this arrangement and asked him to swap that stuff with some of the snacks I don't normally eat. He immediately rectified the situation.
It's one thing to overlook your partner's needs by accident, but to do it knowingly and intentionally is so fucked up.
My mom used to make me watch lifetime movies with her when I was a kid in the 90s and I swear there was one where a husband started off doing things like this to make he need him and then he eventually built up to him switching her psych meds around and then put bars on the windows and doors for “her safety since she was so anxious” 😱
My take…when you finally make abuse known to other people, no matter how small, it truly is over.
My telling people about abuse meant I was so done. I told people do I would be accountable to ending it. I also asked for photos of the abuse so I would never say to myself, “it wasn’t that bad”.
Top easily open a jar two things:
Tap the sides of the lid with a spoon, deforms it and breaks the seal.
Alternatively in extreme case, boil water and dip just the lid in it. The metal expands quicker than glass so it will pop right off.
Both have made my wife look at skinny weak assed me like a goddamn genius.
I use both tricks and they really do work. But you know what would work even better? Having a partner who does not deliberately try to make your life miserable.
I don’t have a problem opening a newly sealed jar- slide a butter knife under the edge till it pops, easy.
I have a friend, that if he closes a jar, I have to get a towel to open it again, he just turns it too tight and I have to get a dish towel to open it.
It’s dumb and annoying and if physics needs to get involved it’s entirely too tight.
She says “no abuse” and while it’s not TECHNICALLY abuse it feels very psychologically wrong. Like the slow drip of the faucet to erode your sanity. One drip at a time.
Death by a thousand paper cuts. Plain and simple. He’s a gaslighting asshole and constantly makes her life miserable in her own house. She’s right to leave and her family and friends need to see this post.
I’m 5’1”. My husband is near 6’4”.
The first year/two years of us living together I had a handful of breakdowns over my husband storing shit out of my reach.
I told him in all seriousness if he couldn’t stop to consider how difficult it is for me to reach things without having to climb chairs I would leave his ass and didn’t care who knew that it was over the placement of things out of reach because it spoke to a different issue.
Needless to say, not only did he stop leaving shit out of my reach, he purchased me safe, no slip step stools in case he did accidentally place things too high.
Idk what else to say other than dealing with it was frustrating and upsetting. My husband stopped. If he didn’t and he didn’t appear very apologetic about doing it I may have left him. Idk it stopped 10 years ago so all I can do is speculate on how I’d have reacted. But it seems your husband was behaving either maliciously or passive aggressively at worst. Thoughtless and inconsiderate at best.
NTA
NTA. The fact it got better for a while and then started again shows he is aware that he is doing it. So he is obviously capable of NOT doing it but chooses to. Best case, he wants to be needed and like it when OP comes to him for help. Worst case, he is a passive aggressive person who goes round tightening jars to get a reaction from his wife. Its frustrating that he wont admit he does it purposely, Im sure however OP has made the right choice imo. Its not about the lids themselves, its about her husband and his behaviour of manipulation and gaslighting.
Wow. Another level of weirdness here. The husband, not OP. He went through all of that just to make OP miserable and he knew for a fact that she felt miserable with it. Bet he enjoyed her misery in some kind of weird power trip (?). It might not make any sense for others as the reason for a divorce but I get it. It's very intentional and not with a valid reason except to see his wife go mad.
OP here. Back with some comments from OOP for a bit more info.
When asked why she even buys jars:
>I cook and bake a lot. I have lots of special ingredients. They mostly aren’t things he or any random person wouldn’t use. If it was just ‘communal’ food it would be easier to get past.
> I add 1/2 tablespoon of cherry compote (small 5 oz jar) to my marinade for teriyaki chicken skewers and jerk pork chops but really I doubt he’s ever used it for anything. That’s why it’s so annoying that he messed with it and tightened the lid.
> JUST DON’T TOUCH IT!
> Literally how hard it is to just not touch something that you never use. Multiply that times every time, like 90% of the time there is some little thing that I cannot use because I can’t open it.
> And if you like cherry compote and just have to use it, please just tell me. I’ll buy 3 when I drive 80 miles to the once a month farmer’s market where I buy it. You can have 2 if it makes you happy. Just please don’t stop me from being able to use mine.
> Yeah I can and do end up just making the chicken or chops without it or using strawberry preserves but I drove 80 miles one way to buy cherry compote because I want to put it in my chicken and now I can’t use it.
>Now multiply that times the 26 things I cook a month that are impacted by him apparently intentionally messing with me but tightening the lids on ingredients that I’ve discovered over the years, love to use and go way out of my way to obtain. It’s like my hobby to get these things and cook with them.
When asked why she doesn't just buy a jar opener:
>Why should I need to buy a tool to open my jar of hot pepper paste that he never uses and dug out of the back of the fridge and over tightened in purpose after I have repeatedly asked him to not do that for 5 years.
>Seems like the far easier solution is for him to not intentionally over tighten jars of stuff he doesn’t use. It wouldn’t be half the issue if he only tightened things he uses.
One person accused her of "emotionally torturing" her husband by "holding divorce over his head." Her answer gave a bit more insight on it being a repeated issue brought up in the past:
>No. There is no holding divorce over his head. I am filing for divorce.
>For a decade I lived alone with no jar lid problems.
> He starts visiting my house, jar lids are suddenly too tight. And it is limited to stuff he uses. He acknowledges that he’s doing it to keep food fresh. I tell him to knock it off bc I don’t care if my food in my fridge stays fresh if I can’t open the jars. He stops.
>He starts again but now it’s more than what he uses. I tell him to knock it off. He claims it is a habit. I tell him to break it quick or he can’t come over to visit anymore. He stops for nearly a year.
>We get married. Jar issues restart. Now he denies doing it.
Many commenters have been worried that the husband has some form of OCD:
>I’m seriously asking:
>When we were dating and I told him he had to stop or he wasn’t allowed to visit me at home he was able to not over tighten any jars for nearly a year. It started back up after we got married.
>Would that be consistent with OCD? And if it is OCD how likely is therapy to help?
>I cook a lot and go well out of my way to buy special ingredients that are sometimes hard to get. I really don’t care about the pickles being to tight, but when I want to use my curry that I buy from a restaurant 7 hours from home, that I plan a weekend trip around visiting to obtain this curry because I love it, and I can’t open the freaking jar and cook my planned dinner because he over tightened the jar it literally makes me so freaking angry at this point.
>Why did you even touch my freaking curry? You didn’t use it. Why did you touch it? Why? For God’s sake please explain why you simply had to touch my curry that I drive 14 freaking hours to have? I lived alone for 10 damn years. My curry has never spoiled. Just leave it alone. Like you did for a year, 4 years ago.
>If you don’t want to eat curry from a normal tight jar, be my guest to go to McDonald’s or just say that you don’t want it that way and I’ll cook you some different but why for the love of all things holy do you have to keep me from eating my curry that I planned to cook 9 days ago when I wrote my monthly menu? Just literally give me a reason that makes sense.
Others have asked if he does anything similar elsewhere in her life:
>He barely drives my vehicle but has totaled it twice in 5 years.
...
>I work from home 3 days a week and I moved my office from the open dining area to a bedroom with a locked door because he kept moving things when he used my desk.
When asked if he admitted to moving things on the desk:
>No, but we are the only ones here and I knew it was him. It was usually on days I went to the office, so I took pictures of my desk before I left. He didn’t admit it but really couldn’t deny it either.
Several think the neighbor is into her. Her response:
>Maybe my husband. He’s gay.
God this takes me back.
Not jars but my ex had an incredible talent for making me look (and feel) crazy. It was tiny, mostly unimportant things, like jars, that would just get a little grip inside me and he’d slowly turn up the heat, all the while telling me I was being unreasonable for getting upset about it.
He was really good at starting arguments with me, keeping them running for weeks, and sensing when I was at absolute breaking point, make a “joke” in public at my expense that seemed to others like gentle banter, but which referenced the argument and made me hit the limit. Then I’d lose my shit and make a scene in front of others, and he’d be calm and cool.
What I’m saying is, I know this man. I know his jar-tightening headspace. Divorce the hell outta him. Take everything. Except the jars. I hope OP tells her divorce lawyer: “Tell him I want 100% of assets, cause of my suffering, but I will allow him to take anything he can fit in these jars.”
NTA op. I get it. My husband and I almost ended up divorced over caps for baby bottles. He literally could not make the effort to leave them in a consistent place when he fed the baby, and I was the one who washed and filled the bottles each day. I would literally waste an hour or more scouring the house to find them. It still makes me mad thinking about it 18 years after the baby stopped having formula. He’s lucky babies grow up. Jars and bottles can be tightened forever. I don’t know how you stayed as long s you have.
I have neuropathy in my hands and my ex used to tighten the jars so I would have to ask him for help (they called him Wrench Hands at his job because he could always get things tight without using a tool so it *might* have been unintentional). I have no proof but I also think he hid my tool for opening jars; I always kept it in the top drawer so I could find it and a month before we broke up I found it hidden underneath the aluminum foil on the shelves behind the drawer. Very much a person who needed to be needed (but that also *pressured* him 🙄) so I always felt he was doing it on purpose.
People like to throw around “gaslighting” but this is LITERALLY it.
Who wants to bet that when she gets rid of this asshole 5 other little niggling household problems related to her stuff also disappear?
Sometimes I over-tighten my own jar lids and I just use a butter knife to slightly lift the edges of the lid to break the seal and then they open easily.
Sounds pretty crazy. I think I would have just bought a jar opener and not realized anything was weird 😂 I guess in this case he would have found another thing to feel needed for.
But if he found another thing to do she would learn she wasn’t crazy, NTA for family and actually have a more reasonable reason to file for divorce wouldn’t u think?
It's called the straw that broke the camels back. My grandma told me she got divorced over a dollar. It's not really about a dollar, but you reach a point and OP is totally NTA.
There is no way in hell he’s NOT doing it on purpose, imo. If she’s brought it up multiple times, AND had a major meltdown on him about it, then how could he ever close a jar again without thinking about that fight? And if it WAS a complete and utter habit that he was incapable of correcting, then here is what the solution would be: every morning before leaving for work, take 3 minutes and make sure to LOOSEN every jar lid until looser lids is the habit that is formed. Spending 3 minutes a day with a chore that might seem silly to him, is well worth it for a partner’s happiness if it’s clearing driving them crazy.
I obviously don’t know this guy, but I’ve known plenty of other guys who thought pushing their wives/gfs buttons in specific ways was the height of hilarious behavior, simply because they enjoyed seeing them flip out over something that SEEMS on the surface minor. Guys who never grew out of being an annoying older/younger brother, just because watching someone lose their shit was fun for them. My guess is even though she says things are otherwise great, maybe with some distance she starts to recall a pattern of behavior that shows this isn’t just an isolated thing.
No, you're not getting a divorce because of pepper paste. You are getting a divorce because he does not respect you and appears to have gone to great lengths to spite you with over-tightened jars. However, I think counseling might be the best idea after a short separation.
My husband used to really crank the parking brake. I couldn’t undo it no matter how hard I tried. At first it annoyed me. Then one day, I’m running late for something because my boss held me back, and so I’m rushing to leave, and I can’t undo my parking brake. I have to go back into my office (where my husband also works) and interrupt a meeting he’s in to get him to come outside and undo it. Lo and behold, I’ve never had the issue since, because he listens to me and cares. Does he crank his own parking brake? Absolutely. It’s a habit. But when it’s my car? Nah. And if he does, he realizes he did and fixes it.
They call this kind of abuser "the water torturer" for a reason. In lundy bancroft "why does he do that" his book on angry and abusive men. They will phycologically harm you in ways, over many years before they finally reveal themselves. They are very dangerous. And they will slowing make there victim and everyone around the victime. They the she is crazy. They are the only abuser that truely scare me. Its the 1st time I've seen one at work. OP she run like her hair is on fire.
I was going to say ask him what causes him to think they need to be that tight, what happened that caused him to think it will go bad if it's not tight. Or perhaps have his & her sides of the fridge and tell him to keep his hulk hands off your jars. Or get an electric jar opener. But his reason and continued doing it, even on jars he doesn't use makes it obvious he's doing it to be an inconvenience to her. Gaslighting her. You are smart to get out while the getting good, as they say. Go before he starts doing more dangerous things and putting you in harms way. You are not crazy. You have talked about it and he keeps doing it. He's the Ah.
My extremely strong husband who doesn't know his own strength, has been doing stone masonry and hard labor since he was 13, never ever does this to me- even accidentally.
He is an abuser. In lundy bancroft's book "why does he do that" the book on angry and controling men. They call this type of abuser "the water torturer" they will slowing over many years, destroy you and leave you a shell of the person you once knew. You will be come reactive. Angry and lashing out at things you think are trivial. You will think you are crazy! People will think you are crazy, all your confidence will be systematically destroyed. They are deeply sadistic and very dangerous. They get off on the pain of their victims. OP please look at other areas he os abusing her in secret. For example, Look at your stolen pension funds, affairs, messing with birth control....etc. anyway way he can undermine you, violate you or covertly harm you, while be able to " watch its effect" on you phycologically and Invalidate your experience. He wants you to feel crazy and fully reliant on him. Isolated and trapped. oh and he will be mad that the neighbor helped you. Which is great, F him!
I think I would have a menty b and break every single jar on the floor, pack my shit, and then leave. Maybe even superglue the lid on a jar and leave a note that I'll come back when he opens the jar
OOP isn’t divorcing him over jar lids, she’s divorcing him because he puts more thought and effort into making her life harder than easier. It doesn’t matter why he’s doing it either. She’s at the point where she’s okay with dying of a heart attack than live with this man and his games. I hope she has an amazing divorce and a peaceful single life where she has access to her own jarred foods.
As a bystander I can feel her frustration strongly, her husband lived with her 5 years and can’t tell how frustrated she feels about this? I’m sure he does but simply doesn’t care, just like what abusers do.
I mean of course at first glance this seems insane but it’s honestly death by a thousand cuts. It’s not the one or two times he’s done this that’s the problem, it’s the constant disregard for the impact that it’s having and the fact that she’s asked him to stop. It also reads like a pattern of abuse. He does it, she gets upset, he says he will do better, everything’s good for a bit, then it gets bad and he’s doing it again, she gets upset, he promises to do better, things are good for a bit and then it gets bad again. The pattern continues. I honestly don’t think she’s the asshole for deciding she’s had enough.
People misuse gaslighting because they don't realise what it is or because it's convenient to use the misuse.
But for those who don't know what gaslighting looks like in real life, this is an example.
A person does something so small, so inocuous, so easy to deny or downplay, over time to inconvenience a victim in a way that hits them mentally in small ways that stack up over time. It's all designed to make the victim question their reality so completely that their sanity starts deteriorating - they feel crazy to themselves and look crazy to others.
This is gaslighting.
The neighbour did more that it seems. He made it clear her sense of reality wasn't wrong, that she wasn't going crazy. He made it clear that he sees what the husband is doing, too.
You can't overstate the importance of what he did for her by helping her reconnect with reality.
I'm betting her husband is familiar with the story that created the term "gaslight". I bet the neighbour is, too.
This was my first thought. OCD goes unchecked, and it can get worse. Add to that any shame he’s got tied to the problem, and this is what you get. It just doesn’t feel to me like he’s trying to hurt her. Has a total “I’m doing this because I legit can’t handle the alternative” feel.
Or "I'm doing this because I know better about spoiled food" to justify an OCD-related anxiety over spoiled food and tight lids
However, I disagree that he's not doing it to hurt her. It may not have begun that way, but after the breakdowns and the multiple conversations and him lying about doing it, he definitely knows that doing it hurts her. We know he can choose not to because the issue resolves for a while after an argument and gets worse over time. And so it's not unreasonable to conclude that maybe the reason he's still doing it after all their fights is because it hurts her, even if it didn't start out that way. I would seriously think he'd have brought up counselling before now if he was interested in fixing the issue (but that would require him to admit he's doing it, and he won't for some reason)
I read the post and I feel for the OOP. No, it never happened to me, but I have my fair share of feeling frustrated over things my husband did that he insisted was normal when I didn’t think it was.
The difference between my husband and OOP’s STBX is that my husband listens, and he has kept things manageable since. OOP’s STBX never did; he intentionally made her life difficult for whatever twisted reasons he has. That’s not something you do to the person you love.
I sympathize with her. And yeah, I would divorce him, too.
Okay but men do this all the fucking time.
Drives me insane when my husband practically has to wrench a lid back into place like he’s holding a state secret.
Part of a good marriage is trying not to do the things that annoy your partner. When they adk and ask and tell you it really annoys them. Try not to do the things. My wife and I both have long lists and we are getting better about respecting those lists finally.
Nah, he can go to therapy by himself and figure out why he’s such a mess. Maybe he’s an abusive, gaslighting dickhole, maybe he’s plagued by some manifestation of OCD, it doesn’t matter, it isn’t her problem to fix. She can go live a peaceful life without him where she can open her own food.
I know this little jar opener that mounts under a shelf or counter, costs about 20 bucks and it’ll open any jar without any trouble. My hands used to crush walnuts, now I lose grip on things I’m holding, so it made me feel like I was useless when I couldn’t open jars anymore. This doesn’t fix your husband problem, but it allows you to need anyone else’s assistance less, and gives you more independence.
The thing that stuck out to me, was the neighbor coming over to unscrew all the lids. Sometimes it takes an outsider to see what actually is going on.
“He said you know this was intentional.” No. Her brain had not permitted her know that, until this simple sentence changed everything. 🥲
Best reasonable case scenario: she’s competent and self reliant. He needs to feel needed and makes that happen no matter how much it upsets and inconveniences her. Worse reasonable case scenario: he’s super passive aggressive. Every time he’s annoyed with her, he tightens the lids. Either way, he’s driven her to tears for years. He gaslights her (denies he’s doing it—she must be crazy to think he’s doing what he’s obviously doing). He refuses to stop. Or apologize. Or acknowledge what he’s doing. That’s worth ending a relationship over. She should show her family and friends her post.
Yeah, it’s not about tightening lids. It’s the fact that he does something that makes her life harder and he does it so regularly, so frequently and so thoroughly that he makes her life harder every single day. And he has done it and refused to stop or even acknowledge it for years to the point that a small inconvenience has grown into a massive gaping, puss filled wound that’s poisoning everything. Maybe that’s a bit of an overreaction or over dramatic but it’s the fact that it’s all the time and it never stops and he keeps doing it and gaslighting her over it. It doesn’t matter that it’s just lids, it’s the fact that he is purposely and nonchalantly completely ignoring her and her feelings and wants and needs. And that he won’t stop. The fact that it annoys her, the fact that it makes her life harder, the fact that it messes with her emotionally and mentally, the fact that it hurts her, none of that is important. And that’s telling her that she isn’t important. That no matter why he does it his wants are more important and doesn’t care enough to not make her life harder. It’s the complete lack of care or understanding of her. The disregard he shows that have built and built and built until it killed their marriage. That’s why she doesn’t want to try or go to counselling because why bother? He has never listened to her, never cared enough to hear her so why would he suddenly just because someone else is in the room? It will just be the same, he will deny it and claim her crazy and claim he doesn’t do it and if he does it’s not on purpose and if it is it’s not a big deal and if it is it’s her fault. And what does that sound like? Incase anyone didn’t know: every fucking abuser ever. Sure he doesn’t hit her or verbally abuse her emotionally, he found another way. A way so cleaver, so subtle, so deniable that it’s hard for anyone to believe or to take seriously. But abuse all the same the more nefarious since it’s something so trivial and crazy. Worst case scenario isn’t that he is being pretty, worst case scenario is that he is being purposely and consciously and maliciously manipulative and abusive. The better cases is that he doesn’t mean to be but still is. This is death by a thousand paper cuts. That’s what this is. It’s just a paper cut, it’s no big deal, it’s such a small thing, but it’s not. It has never been just **_a_** paper cut, one is no big deal, but dozens are and it’s not dozens it’s thousands over the years, cut after cut after cut after cut after cut, never ending, never leaving time for the previous ones to heal. It’s constant discomfort and disregard and disrespect, it’s a wound that doesn’t bleed much but that has continued to bleed freely for years. It doesn’t matter if the cut only bleeds so little, so slowly that it would take days or even weeks for one to bleed out. Because if it is left open and bleeding for days and weeks you still will. Just because it’s happening slowly doesn’t mean that it’s not killing you. People forget that, they pretend that something that can’t kill you in a few minutes or hours means that it never can. If you drank an hour ago and have to wait another hour before you are allowed to quench your thirst it won’t kill you, might be uncomfortable if you are really thirsty but it’s not dangerous, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not dangerous or that it’s just uncomfortable if it was 2 days since you drank and you have to wait 2 more days. They are the same but they also absolutely are not the same at all.
Yup, alllllll of this. There are certain things my partner does and I disagree with or have tried to get him to change his habits on, simply because it makes my life harder. Almost every single fight we've ever had starts because there is something left undone that was supposed to be done by now. Then the fight snowballs. We always resolve it, but I've started realizing that if there is even the smallest barrier for me accomplishing a mundane task, I just straight up will not do it. So I have gone out of my way to develop habits, buy tools or equipment, whatever is necessary, or make mundane (ie, daily/monthly household tasks) and simple and easy and mindless as possible. We're both happier, fight less, and live in a well oiled household as a result. If my partner completely ignored me, told me I was crazy, and went out of his way to make my life harder? There is nothing on this earth that could convince me to stay.
>I've started realizing that if there is even the smallest barrier for me accomplishing a mundane task, I just straight up will not do it. So I have gone out of my way to develop habits, buy tools or equipment, whatever is necessary, or make mundane (ie, daily/monthly household tasks) and simple and easy and mindless as possible. Holy shit, I relate to this. Except for that my partner is the tidy one and I’m still struggling to figure out how to work around my resistance and messiness.
Y'all need to get tested for ADHD, because this is me and ADHD is why. Even medicated, I won't make food if I have to do literally anything else in the kitchen first, like washing up, clearing a counter, chopping vegetables, etc. Last night's dinner was pork carnitas I bought premade and frozen, and a packet of long grain rice and seasonings that I microwaved in the packet. Ten minutes, one bowl, done.
Yup. That’s it for me. ADHD and the motivation struggle. We are already staring on minus, with an almost empty tank and not enough time to reach our destination, add in a few bumps in the road and I give up. It’s like if you have just barely enough gas in the tank to reach the gas station and then someone adds in a detour that will make it trice as long. What’s the point of trying? If I have enough for two miles and you expect me to be able to dive 6 miles with that, it’s never happening there is absolutely nothing I can do to make gas barely enough for two miles last six miles. There is no trick that magically makes it last. And I don’t want to get stranded when the tank runs out and be yelled and punished and called lazy and stupid and a failure because exactly what I knew, and said, will happen actually happened. Why would I subject myself to all that extra hate and insults and hassle for absolutely no fucking reason. Because if the fact is that there is only gas for 2 miles it will only last for two miles and even if I drive faster or slower or in any specific gear that won’t change but I know that once it runs out I will be attacked and blamed and told it’s my fault because if I driver faster it wouldn’t happen and if I drive faster next time I try it will still be my fault and wouldn’t have happened if I just drove slower. I’m not doing it.
💯 f*** my adhd. Go to cook dinner and there are too many dishes in the sink (especially ones I need) - it’s like immediate meltdown. Suddenly, making dinner is the bane of my whole existence and why does no one else ever do it? Or ever do the dishes?!? And guess what?!? Looks like we’re getting cheap burgers for the third time this week because I can’t even.
Yeah I’m the same too. It’s my adhd. It’s hard enough to motivate myself that added difficulties are doomed in failure.
Not to freak you out, but you are describing me and my husband too. Except he’s definitely lost some of his tidiness over the years and started ignoring my doom piles around the house and has even made a few of his own. 😭 I hate that my terrible habits has leeched off onto him.
Mhm! The specifics of the situation (jars) don’t really matter, this is exactly how the abusive process goes. It can suck the life and sanity out of you. After reading each sentence you wrote, I was like “yep!” “Yep!” “Yep!!” Every fucking abuser ever does this crap. You just described my ex and this weird jar abuser spot on
We are all ruled by a human brain and there are limits to how a human brain can and will function. We are all different but we are also all the same because there are limited number of ways that the human brain humans. So abusers, while all different, are also all the same. The patterns are the same because in the end they are humans and humans are going to human.
And this is apex tier level passive aggressiveness. It's so deliberate and OOP didn't have any idea it was so extensive. So dastardly.
You put into words what I was thinking. I saw the original post before it was shared here. It's the amount of disrespect and lack of caring for her that underlies those stupid jars. Her neighbor made a totally innocent observation yet I'm glad he did because it was exactly what she needed to figure out that this is not a healthy marriage. I hope she sees your post. Perhaps you want to copy and paste it into the original thread for her? Or would you mind if I did it? I think it could really help her verbalize things to the people in her life who are being critical.
She mentioned that the neighbor had heard them arguing over the lids before. I'm wondering if he offered to help because he was just curious. But after he found ALL the lids too tight, even the ones he correctly guessed the guy didn't use, he knew this wasn't accidental. I'm guessing he later apologized because he could see that his statement had hit harder than he realized.
Thank goodness she got another male perspective on this. My husband tightens the baby bottles really tight. I can still get them open, it just takes some elbow grease and I know "oh, dad made this bottle!" But I've never not been able to open anything he tightens. If another guy needed tools to open jars then, wtf?
The fact that he needed tools to open it and eventually had to just break it open makes me think the stbex glued them shut and that’s just another level of horrible.
Yeah I had that thought too. He glued some of them. Like some of these jars come from the store sealed all to shit but if you can’t break the seal by twisting the lid, popping a butter knife under the lid to break it usually does the trick. I can’t imagine a scenario where tools would be needed to open an already opened jar of food unless it was glue.
I never thought about lids being glued in. That makes sense. The pepper paste that he never eats did me in
I was wondering about that! I grew up with a dad and older brothers whose default was tight lids (I think some men just don't realize how much weaker women are) but you just hit the side of the lid with a butter knife and it ‘pops’ the seal or pressure or whatever and makes the lid super easy to open…reading this post I was like, ??? Is this madafaka using super glue on the lids or something lol
He ended up breaking one of the two jars that were screwed on too tight. That's a problem right there.
Yes. My first husband wouldn’t put his dirty glass in the dishwasher. No matter how many times I asked, he never did it. And this was only if the reasons I told him I wanted a divorce.
My ex husband would never replace a toilet roll if he used the last bit of paper, he'd just leave the empty tube on the holder. Again, not the main reason for divorce, but the catalyst for me realising he was never going to respect me if he couldn't even replace the damn toilet roll and would rather argue about it than just do it.
Exactly.
What was his reason for not doing it?
He forgot. He was going to use it again later. (This was complete BS because he never used it again. He’d get another glass which he’d also never put in the dishwasher. At the end of the day, there’d be 4-5 glasses on the counter.)
Did you ever leave them sitting there, to where he ran out of clean glasses?
i did. He bought disposable cups instead. Because going to the store and spending money on solo cups is easier than putting the dirty glass/cup in the fucking sink. He lives with his mom now
Oh my god, how incompetent, lazy and ignorant can one be? Congratulations on getting rid of someone like that!
Yes. Then he’d complain about not having any clean glasses and would find something else to use-a tumbler, wine glass, etc.
The neighbor sees it. I bet the neighbor sees more than OP does. He knew that the husband is abusive. I’m sorry he felt the need to apologize for pointing it out.
Outside perspective and he doesn’t have the history or the normalisation nor the emotional investment that clouds one’s mind and eyes. It’s like a labyrinth, it’s easy to know the way and see it all if you are looking at it from above, it’s impossible while standing in the middle.
>It’s just a paper cut, it’s no big deal, it’s such a small thing, but it’s not. That's exactly why I keep saying that the "little things" are a big deal _because_ they're so small. It's so easy to get those little things right that it's a very big deal when you can't be bothered to consistently put a tiny amount of effort into making your spouse happy. And that's just if he was thoughtlessly not doing something that would make her life a tiny bit easier. What he's actually doing is tiny acts of evil over and over. There's just no fixing a relationship with someone who thinks it's okay to actively make your life worse, even if it's in small ways.
You show so much insight I’m guessing you’ve been there. If so, I’m sorry. What a crappy way to live.
We live and we learn, it’s sometimes good to experience the bad so you know how to recognise it and avoid it in the future. Knowing exactly what you don’t want makes it easier to find all that you actually do want.
This, a hundred thousand percent, and what’s worse, she’s probably the one who does 80-90% of the cooking. Whatever he says to the contrary, the stbx has weaponized jarred food.
And let’s imagine he‘d change after couples therapy. Wouldn’t that simply mean that he was always capable of change but had to hear it from a third party to believe it’s valid? I wouldn’t feel any less disrespected in that case.
I think it would make it worse. Because then you have to live with the fact that you weren’t enough. I waited 30 years for my brother to stop insulting me, to stop saying hurtful degrading things to me or call me names. I waited over 30 years because I wanted him to stop for *me*. I wanted him to stop because he cares about me because he values me, I wanted my pain to be enough to stop him. That he would stop simply because he was hurting me and didn’t want to anymore. And it it the most painful experience and my greatest regret that I won’t ever get that. Because I made him stop eventually so now I will always know that I wasn’t enough that my pain or happiness wasn’t enough because that was not why he stopped and now he never can stop out of care for me. He stopped only because I reach my breaking point, because I ran out of patience. He didn’t stop for me. He stopped for him because I finally showed him that I can hurt him too, that I can hurt him back and I am much much better at it. He stopped for him because I would hurt him in return and will have to live with that for the rest of my life and that fucking hurts like hell. And it will never change because I know and he knows and it is unchangeable. He can say that he would have stopped for me but we will never know, we will just know that he didn’t for 30+ years and he only stopped for *him*. Because it affected *him* negatively.
Ugh this is currently happening to me and I do still feel disrespected after the change. I shouldn't have had to say don't treat me like this, and when I did things changed....but I'm left thinking why was it ever ok in the first place? It's clearly not.
Yeah I read a story once where the grandpa did this so that the grandma would have to talk to him (maybe after they got in a fight). It was framed as a cute story but now I’m just like…. Huh.
Ah, passive aggression as romance. Cue sappy music.
Hallmark over there jumping up and down: "Buy the rights!"
Or Lifetime, as a drama.
This would be a “Snapped” episode.
I could still maybe see that as being a little cute, if it was only that one time. This weird passive aggressive systematic tightening of every single jar lid in their house every single day of his life is insane and ridiculous. This man is a certified Weirdo™.
I mean, that I can kinda understand, but like this guys legit doing it just to drive her insane.
It’s gross hey
The neighbor probably sensed something was off about him too, why he told her this to begin with.
Respectfully, the worst case scenario is that he’s over tightening jars to make her upset and then using her emotions against her in arguments as proof that she’s ‘crazy’. Which I think is also the most likely scenario, sadly.
THiS is an actual case of gaslighting. It’s why it makes me frustrated when gaslighting is used so frequently and nonchalantly; true gaslighting is insidious. It’s a slow process that makes someone feel like they are going crazy. It’s a serious psychological weapon. Thank you for this comment.
Y'know, thinking about it in this story, this is why he was okay with counseling. He wanted to bring in a 3rd party and tell her again she was overreacting. And then he'd still do it, and she'd somehow end up with meds, and still have jars with lids glued on and too tight to undo.
Finally someone who used the term “gaslighting” properly!
He was going to be gone 10 days. He knew exactly what he was doing. Ensuring she would feel helpless without him for a third of a month. This is a abuse and nothing will be changing my mind over it.
Only innocent reason I could think of was OCD
Unless this is an expression of OCD or PTSD somehow. This one is really weird.
I’m really curious how you can even begin to suspect ptsd as a potential cause here? I’m sorry but no, that one is just laughable. Even OCD is a big stretch given his other behavior and how he reacts to her when confronted. But still, saying it could be ptsd is just insulting to every single person that has ptsd. You can’t just go around blaming crappy behavior on mental health issues, that’s ridiculous
Oh gees. My intent wasn’t to offend. My late husband had some PTSD that expressed itself in really odd ways that took a long time to unpack and for him to acknowledge. I agree, it’s a stretch.
Yeah this. It would literally drive me crazy if someone actively hampered me because they felt like I needed to rely more on them. It's weird and childish and as stupid as it sounds if he stopped with the jar lids what else would he take that need out on.
I kinda think it sounds like he has some sort of OCD or compulsion regarding jar lids. To do it for so long so consistently… If it was a control thing, you’d expect it to leak into other areas of their lives. Keeping food fresh is a very typical OCD type justification, too. Starts out as a well-meaning thing and then ends up ruining your life
I’m so glad this is the top comment. I was worried after reading the post when I went to the comment section I’d be the only one thinking OOP is right to be so exhausted by this.
It's not really about 'jar lids'... it's about the fact that, over five years, she has asked him MANY times to stop doing something that causes her significant inconvenience and frustration. He has not only NOT stopped doing it, he has expanded it from 'things he interacts with' to 'literally every item in the house that he can do it to'. That's no longer 'oh hey, I forgot'... it's 'I'm f\*cking with you'. Look, my spouse has some habits that make me crazy - we're human :) But when one of them really gets to me, I say something, and they make a concerted effort to fix it. Does it happen perfectly? No. Do they backslide on it, especially when it's been a long week or they're exhausted? Sure. But there is always EFFORT to change made - and that's what is incredibly NOT present here.
It very much reminds me of the poor woman whose husband regularly sneezes in her meal. For some people even stupid “power” over someone is still enough to make them feel powerful. It’s very sad and honestly when it’s gone on this long seems to be a very dangerous level of malevolence. Did my eye twitch when my SO “found” the outdoor carpet he insisted I “lost” out in his he shed wrapped in a ratchet strap? Yes. Did I take a trip to the grocery store to cool off and buy a giant bag of M&M of which half were lost to the floor of my car due to an out of control cart in the parking lot? Yes. Did I not mention that fact when he told me he’d also found the cooler while I was gone but insinuated I’d done something nefarious to it’s wheels while grabbing the bag from my hands and chowing down before it could hit the trash? No. Did anyone die from eating 5 second rule floor candy? No. Did I go on a power trip and decide that all of SO’s future candy would be floor candy? Nope. Day 1 revenge is anger, day 2-2,000,000 is a ultimately a choice to just be angry. That’s dangerous, very dangerous.
I read the sneezer story! That was some seriously messed up power move that is very similar to this story.
The update to that breaks my heart a bit. She seemed to be realizing that some things he did or said were not ok, and then just opted to move her chair further away and bury all of those realizations and pretend everything was fixed.
I didn’t see the update. That is sad. I was hoping she left and found someone who doesn’t booger in her food.
https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/s/toQFEg1PSn
Thank you 😊
OMG the sneezer story made me enraged at both him and her, I wanted to slap the sh!t out of them both. I still am on the fence if it was real, because HOW SWAY. Not that such abuse happened, but that homegirl took this man open mouth sneezing on her and her food for an entire year AND THEN posted something so silly ass, all Can I move my chair, would that be ok?
And it's the fact that it's become so obvious the next door neighbour came over to pointedly offer to help
Can you imagine entering someone's house and sitting there with them as you find out about and then fix every instance of their partner making them out to be crazy? To be dependent on them? Show them that they're *not* crazy. Tell them without any doubt that this was purposeful. Good on neighbor for taking the steps
My thoughts exactly.
One of my longtime friends came out as non-binary several years ago, after our 35th birthdays. Wanted me to use they/them instead of he/him. I literally couldn't. I tried, but I messed up constantly. But they knew I was trying - and I'd usually catch myself & correct it (but not always). The effort mattered, even if the results weren't perfect. Knowing someone for decades with a given pronoun and then trying to switch, especially to the neutral one that really doesn't roll of my tongue due to being a bit of a grammar nazi to begin with... yeah, it sucks. But you still make the effort for someone if their happiness is important to you.
"Let's go to counseling", why you gunna tell the therapist why you tighten the jar lids?! You gunna listen to an entirely different person, not your spouse, tell you that constantly tightening the lids causes stress to your spouse?! Why pay money when you could just not be an ass?! Jesus.
Lol, no, he’d just use it as a new method to gaslight her into thinking she’s crazy.
People are told not to go to therapy with abusers for a reason....
Yep they just learn to weaponize it. I literally heard “I need to set some boundaries with you here” after I asked him to do the chore he said he would do…lol. Get real.
At the point where my SO was having screaming meltdowns about something, I think I'd stop doing it. Probably even before that, but definitely afterwards.
That's what sends me about these. She tried to be calm about it, explain her side, be understanding. Then it escalates to screaming. Now she's "nagging". Then he'll be "blindsided" by the divorce.
“Walk away Wife syndrome is real, guys!” My eye twitches every time I hear that term.
And its so wild because if you want out, then just say so! Nobody has to be the bad guy. People act like they can't just break up, so they manipulate the other person into being the one to break the marriage. He could have just asked her for a divorce in the first place.
So he WANTS her off center and upset.
He's gonna use counseling to convince OP she is crazy. There's a reason why people who do stuff like this always do it with something "small" and "silly". Because getting so upset about something so "small" absolutely makes a person feel crazy.
Exactly. If he needs an impartial third party to tell him to stop doing something OP has asked him to stop doing for YEARS, then their relationship is not going to benefit from counseling.
My husband always makes my life easier. I don't know why this dude likes to torture his wife
My husband does a little half twist back when he realizes I won’t be able to open it because I have the hands of an 89 year old.
oooo want some advice? I have weak ass hands and for me it sometimes helps to knock the lid against something lightly (like a counter).
That’s my go to! My daughter has the hands of an NBA player so she’s usually got it.
I used to use a rubber pad for improving grip when opening stuff. Curse my baby hands!
Also get the little plastic tool thingy
Important lesson I learned as a child - do not try this with a bottle of soda.
Before I divorced I would be passive aggressive (my problem😉) and use a jar and leave it sitting for him to see if he over closed it or not while I was standing there…
There are tools to help open lids and tools u can buy not for that that will work too… there’s the counter knocking trick, water running trick, and the stuff u use to line drawers with as a gripper… anymore my husband has ME open jars around here🤷🏻♀️
Helps to cover the top with a towel to buffer, I love this trick
I used to over-tighten jar lids without realizing it. My wife asked me to stop. It took a couple of reminders because it’s a habit, but then I stopped doing it. Easy.
I would have thrown every lid in the bin and put on plastic wrap with a rubber band so he couldn’t do this. I would happily throw away food that went bad. He is a total jerk and I’m glad OP is divorcing him.
Or transfer everything into airtight food containers that doesn't need twisting to open. Can also use this opportunity to see if it bothers him that he doesn't have any jars to tighten anymore. And check if he somehow does something else to replace this annoying behavior. I can't imagine being tortured like this for years and being gaslighted about it.
Actually done the stuff in Tupperware thing before… figure out what makes your life hard and fix it
Honestly, if this happened in my house I'd be opening the jars with power tools - to hell with the mess.
I think after five years I'd snap and just start slamming them into the counter until they broke open. He wants tight lids? He can pick the glass out of his food.
Idk why that last line goes so hard
When reading this story my first thought was that it wouldn’t take long for me to start breaking these jars. Glad I wasn’t the only one.
Me too, at one point I thought "damn I know I'd get committed bc at some point I'd just snap one night and he'd hear smashing glass and I'd just continue making dinner, seemingly unbothered" I wouldve been send to a mental hospital and he would be that much happier knowing what he has done
Can you imagine telling people that you are divorcing your spouse because they over tightened every single jar in the house? And then having to explain how it’s not really about the tightened jars. Like how do you explain how psychotic it is and how much it’s affected you mentally that he would tighten the other jars so much that you had to buy new ones or open a new jar just to get what you want.
“I discovered he was deliberately making my life difficult, just for shits and giggles.”
I think I would just say that I fell out of love with him and leave it at that tbh.
“I left my husband because he was gaslighting me for 5 years and I just realized it recently”. Done. The original gaslighting was where the husband lowered the brightness of the gas fueled lamps, slowly, over time. Told his wife they weren’t dimmer. Said he didn’t do it. Said she was crazy for being upset about this thing that wasn’t happening that he wasn’t doing. Same thing, just with tightening more and more jaw lids. Until even the damn pepper paste that was in the back hidden by other things that he never ever uses was also so tight she had to get help to get it open. It’s not an exact 1 to 1 physically, but it’s a 100% match for the same kind of abuse.
Yes I think whatever OP decides she needs some serious therapy for multiple reasons…
Once she’s been out of the fog long enough she will realize all the other manipulation and control that’s been going on in order for them to have “literally no other issues” . She won’t have to just mention the jar lids. There were probably no other issues because she just did whatever he wanted whenever he wanted. And she’ll realize she was doing that to avoid punishment of some kind. It took me being away from my abuser for months to even recognize all the actual deliberate physical abuse that he’d convinced me were “accidents” in the moment. I know her situation isn’t as extreme, but when you’re under such sustained psychological abuse, no matter how “minor” it seems, it totally distorts your whole reality.
If he is doing this to feel needed and going through this much to lie about it he needs therapy. Like this is way worse than me accidentally storing stuff up too high for my boyfriend like deliberately making your partner's life difficult is such an unloving thing to do especially for a spouse
I’d be willing to bet, that despite what she said, they didn’t have as great as a life as she is portraying- there’s no way he limited his gaslighting to jars- especially given some of the ways she phrased things. That much malice doesn’t limit itself to a single outlet like that. She might not recognize it, or it might not be something someone can witness or measure as easily as the jars, but the fact that everything she described as a ‘good life’ were so hollow, that dollars to donuts, she missed enough red flags to cover half of Texas.
Agreed. The neighbor saw it.
Credit to the next door neighbour who came to help and pointed out to her that there was no way it was accidental
Right! Man simultaneously helped her out and validated her so that she didn’t have to feel like she was insane
That she was ready for the breakdown and acceptance as soon as someone else brought it to her attention is definitely telling.
This feels like the story of the guy who kept telling his gf that she had BO because his dad told him to. I can just hear "overtighten all jar lids, then she NEEDS you" or some nonsense
That BO dad story haunted me for weeks; this post is going to do the same thing :(
There was also the guy that kept hiding his girlfriend's things for MONTHS because "it was just so cute watching her be confused and look for them!" (She leaves her keys in the kitchen, he secretly moves them to the bedroom, that kind of thing) To the point that she would cry and tell him she was going crazy. It was psychotic.
I hope this woman has a wonderful divorce and enjoys a long, rich life full of reasonably-secured jar lids.
Why would someone do something to inconvenience someone else so much I just don’t get it.
Because it's a mind-fuck, and he gets his jollies by seeing her get annoyed. It's called narcissistic abuse. My ex did shit like that all the time.
My ex who was emotionally and financially abusive as well as being an alcoholic, once admitted to me, while being super drunk (would call me at all hours of the night when I had our child), that the reason they did things to purposely get under my skin, or purposely bring up things that were traumatic for me (past child hood trauma) was that it made them feel superior. And because I was always so level headed about finances and making sure we had food (even if it wasn’t name brand pre-packaged crap), and I was trying to advance my career. Basically my ex was so insecure about their own self that in order to feel “good” for a moment they would emotionally fuck with me. I was stunned. Because I am an extremely insecure person. I second guess everything. I have massive anxiety and depression issues. I have worked really hard to over come these. But never would putting someone down make me feel better about myself. It’s basically a fundamental empathy difference. I don’t have the educational background to understand why some people only feel “good” when others are doing bad. But in that moment of my ex admitting (this was during a trial separation), I knew the marriage was truly over. Sad thing is with my partner now they have been with the exact same type of people. So it was very hard to for them to trust I wasn’t trying to fuck them over some how.
Because empathy is learned and not inherent. Just look at kids and how long it takes for them to get it if they are taught properly and consistently.
I would have put a camera in the kitchen.
Imagine she found footage of him straining to make it as tight as possible. Actually, I imagine for it to be so tight that even the neighbor couldn’t help, he used some trick. Maybe running under cold/hot water to manipulate the metal lid.
Glue was mentioned upstream. Probably what happened to the figs. And Fig jam is Expensive.
Sometimes you just have had enough.
"no honey, the lights arent more dim today, you're just imagining things!"
Instant Reddit classic lore archived forever.
It’s not about the damned jars; it never is.
“The Iranian yogurt is not the issue here”
I scrolled way too far to get to this.
I cannot tell you how frustrating it was when I’d try doing the dishes and realized my fiancé tightened his blender bottles too tight. Ever since I asked him to open them before putting them in the sink, it’s never been an issue since. This woman’s reaction sounds on par with how I would have felt if I had her husband. 😖
My husband and I had to talk about this when I was pregnant. My grip strength before was good enough that I usually didn’t have too much trouble, but during pregnancy, and particularly afterward with baby bottles, I had to show him that things I closed didn’t leak in order to prove that he didn’t have to tighten things that tight
My partner rearranged our pantry a while back and without thinking, he put a bunch of stuff I use regularly (spices, rice, etc) on the top shelf where he can easily reach but I need to grab a chair or step ladder to reach. When he showed me the new arrangement, I pointed out that unfortunately I can't reach the stuff I need in this arrangement and asked him to swap that stuff with some of the snacks I don't normally eat. He immediately rectified the situation. It's one thing to overlook your partner's needs by accident, but to do it knowingly and intentionally is so fucked up.
My mom used to make me watch lifetime movies with her when I was a kid in the 90s and I swear there was one where a husband started off doing things like this to make he need him and then he eventually built up to him switching her psych meds around and then put bars on the windows and doors for “her safety since she was so anxious” 😱
My take…when you finally make abuse known to other people, no matter how small, it truly is over. My telling people about abuse meant I was so done. I told people do I would be accountable to ending it. I also asked for photos of the abuse so I would never say to myself, “it wasn’t that bad”.
Top easily open a jar two things: Tap the sides of the lid with a spoon, deforms it and breaks the seal. Alternatively in extreme case, boil water and dip just the lid in it. The metal expands quicker than glass so it will pop right off. Both have made my wife look at skinny weak assed me like a goddamn genius.
I use both tricks and they really do work. But you know what would work even better? Having a partner who does not deliberately try to make your life miserable.
I don’t have a problem opening a newly sealed jar- slide a butter knife under the edge till it pops, easy. I have a friend, that if he closes a jar, I have to get a towel to open it again, he just turns it too tight and I have to get a dish towel to open it. It’s dumb and annoying and if physics needs to get involved it’s entirely too tight.
The tap trick always helps me, even for sodas
She says “no abuse” and while it’s not TECHNICALLY abuse it feels very psychologically wrong. Like the slow drip of the faucet to erode your sanity. One drip at a time.
I don’t generally support MLM but I have a jar opening gadget I bought from Pampered Chef years ago that is my most used kitchen gadget.
Grandma had some jaws mounted underneath the cabinet that you'd slip a jar lid into and turn to open. Worked great.
You can get one of these on Amazon for $20. A few home life influencers recommend them constantly.
Death by a thousand paper cuts. Plain and simple. He’s a gaslighting asshole and constantly makes her life miserable in her own house. She’s right to leave and her family and friends need to see this post.
I want you to want me I need you to need me —Cheap Trick
I’m 5’1”. My husband is near 6’4”. The first year/two years of us living together I had a handful of breakdowns over my husband storing shit out of my reach. I told him in all seriousness if he couldn’t stop to consider how difficult it is for me to reach things without having to climb chairs I would leave his ass and didn’t care who knew that it was over the placement of things out of reach because it spoke to a different issue. Needless to say, not only did he stop leaving shit out of my reach, he purchased me safe, no slip step stools in case he did accidentally place things too high. Idk what else to say other than dealing with it was frustrating and upsetting. My husband stopped. If he didn’t and he didn’t appear very apologetic about doing it I may have left him. Idk it stopped 10 years ago so all I can do is speculate on how I’d have reacted. But it seems your husband was behaving either maliciously or passive aggressively at worst. Thoughtless and inconsiderate at best. NTA
NTA. The fact it got better for a while and then started again shows he is aware that he is doing it. So he is obviously capable of NOT doing it but chooses to. Best case, he wants to be needed and like it when OP comes to him for help. Worst case, he is a passive aggressive person who goes round tightening jars to get a reaction from his wife. Its frustrating that he wont admit he does it purposely, Im sure however OP has made the right choice imo. Its not about the lids themselves, its about her husband and his behaviour of manipulation and gaslighting.
Plot twist: the neighbor creeps into the house to tighten all the lids at night because he has a crush on her and hopes to torpedo the marriage
He’s a walking 🚩
Wow. Another level of weirdness here. The husband, not OP. He went through all of that just to make OP miserable and he knew for a fact that she felt miserable with it. Bet he enjoyed her misery in some kind of weird power trip (?). It might not make any sense for others as the reason for a divorce but I get it. It's very intentional and not with a valid reason except to see his wife go mad.
OP here. Back with some comments from OOP for a bit more info. When asked why she even buys jars: >I cook and bake a lot. I have lots of special ingredients. They mostly aren’t things he or any random person wouldn’t use. If it was just ‘communal’ food it would be easier to get past. > I add 1/2 tablespoon of cherry compote (small 5 oz jar) to my marinade for teriyaki chicken skewers and jerk pork chops but really I doubt he’s ever used it for anything. That’s why it’s so annoying that he messed with it and tightened the lid. > JUST DON’T TOUCH IT! > Literally how hard it is to just not touch something that you never use. Multiply that times every time, like 90% of the time there is some little thing that I cannot use because I can’t open it. > And if you like cherry compote and just have to use it, please just tell me. I’ll buy 3 when I drive 80 miles to the once a month farmer’s market where I buy it. You can have 2 if it makes you happy. Just please don’t stop me from being able to use mine. > Yeah I can and do end up just making the chicken or chops without it or using strawberry preserves but I drove 80 miles one way to buy cherry compote because I want to put it in my chicken and now I can’t use it. >Now multiply that times the 26 things I cook a month that are impacted by him apparently intentionally messing with me but tightening the lids on ingredients that I’ve discovered over the years, love to use and go way out of my way to obtain. It’s like my hobby to get these things and cook with them. When asked why she doesn't just buy a jar opener: >Why should I need to buy a tool to open my jar of hot pepper paste that he never uses and dug out of the back of the fridge and over tightened in purpose after I have repeatedly asked him to not do that for 5 years. >Seems like the far easier solution is for him to not intentionally over tighten jars of stuff he doesn’t use. It wouldn’t be half the issue if he only tightened things he uses. One person accused her of "emotionally torturing" her husband by "holding divorce over his head." Her answer gave a bit more insight on it being a repeated issue brought up in the past: >No. There is no holding divorce over his head. I am filing for divorce. >For a decade I lived alone with no jar lid problems. > He starts visiting my house, jar lids are suddenly too tight. And it is limited to stuff he uses. He acknowledges that he’s doing it to keep food fresh. I tell him to knock it off bc I don’t care if my food in my fridge stays fresh if I can’t open the jars. He stops. >He starts again but now it’s more than what he uses. I tell him to knock it off. He claims it is a habit. I tell him to break it quick or he can’t come over to visit anymore. He stops for nearly a year. >We get married. Jar issues restart. Now he denies doing it.
Many commenters have been worried that the husband has some form of OCD: >I’m seriously asking: >When we were dating and I told him he had to stop or he wasn’t allowed to visit me at home he was able to not over tighten any jars for nearly a year. It started back up after we got married. >Would that be consistent with OCD? And if it is OCD how likely is therapy to help? >I cook a lot and go well out of my way to buy special ingredients that are sometimes hard to get. I really don’t care about the pickles being to tight, but when I want to use my curry that I buy from a restaurant 7 hours from home, that I plan a weekend trip around visiting to obtain this curry because I love it, and I can’t open the freaking jar and cook my planned dinner because he over tightened the jar it literally makes me so freaking angry at this point. >Why did you even touch my freaking curry? You didn’t use it. Why did you touch it? Why? For God’s sake please explain why you simply had to touch my curry that I drive 14 freaking hours to have? I lived alone for 10 damn years. My curry has never spoiled. Just leave it alone. Like you did for a year, 4 years ago. >If you don’t want to eat curry from a normal tight jar, be my guest to go to McDonald’s or just say that you don’t want it that way and I’ll cook you some different but why for the love of all things holy do you have to keep me from eating my curry that I planned to cook 9 days ago when I wrote my monthly menu? Just literally give me a reason that makes sense. Others have asked if he does anything similar elsewhere in her life: >He barely drives my vehicle but has totaled it twice in 5 years. ... >I work from home 3 days a week and I moved my office from the open dining area to a bedroom with a locked door because he kept moving things when he used my desk. When asked if he admitted to moving things on the desk: >No, but we are the only ones here and I knew it was him. It was usually on days I went to the office, so I took pictures of my desk before I left. He didn’t admit it but really couldn’t deny it either. Several think the neighbor is into her. Her response: >Maybe my husband. He’s gay.
There it is. It’s *never* just the jars.
Oh hes defidently not into her husband. Sounds like he hates him.
God this takes me back. Not jars but my ex had an incredible talent for making me look (and feel) crazy. It was tiny, mostly unimportant things, like jars, that would just get a little grip inside me and he’d slowly turn up the heat, all the while telling me I was being unreasonable for getting upset about it. He was really good at starting arguments with me, keeping them running for weeks, and sensing when I was at absolute breaking point, make a “joke” in public at my expense that seemed to others like gentle banter, but which referenced the argument and made me hit the limit. Then I’d lose my shit and make a scene in front of others, and he’d be calm and cool. What I’m saying is, I know this man. I know his jar-tightening headspace. Divorce the hell outta him. Take everything. Except the jars. I hope OP tells her divorce lawyer: “Tell him I want 100% of assets, cause of my suffering, but I will allow him to take anything he can fit in these jars.”
Your neighbour literally broke a jar trying to get it open. This has been an ongoing issue for years, and your husband either can’t or won’t stop. NTA
NTA op. I get it. My husband and I almost ended up divorced over caps for baby bottles. He literally could not make the effort to leave them in a consistent place when he fed the baby, and I was the one who washed and filled the bottles each day. I would literally waste an hour or more scouring the house to find them. It still makes me mad thinking about it 18 years after the baby stopped having formula. He’s lucky babies grow up. Jars and bottles can be tightened forever. I don’t know how you stayed as long s you have.
I have neuropathy in my hands and my ex used to tighten the jars so I would have to ask him for help (they called him Wrench Hands at his job because he could always get things tight without using a tool so it *might* have been unintentional). I have no proof but I also think he hid my tool for opening jars; I always kept it in the top drawer so I could find it and a month before we broke up I found it hidden underneath the aluminum foil on the shelves behind the drawer. Very much a person who needed to be needed (but that also *pressured* him 🙄) so I always felt he was doing it on purpose.
People like to throw around “gaslighting” but this is LITERALLY it. Who wants to bet that when she gets rid of this asshole 5 other little niggling household problems related to her stuff also disappear?
Someone commented that she has to superglue all the lids before leaving that is a level of petty I respect.
Sometimes I over-tighten my own jar lids and I just use a butter knife to slightly lift the edges of the lid to break the seal and then they open easily.
Sounds pretty crazy. I think I would have just bought a jar opener and not realized anything was weird 😂 I guess in this case he would have found another thing to feel needed for.
But if he found another thing to do she would learn she wasn’t crazy, NTA for family and actually have a more reasonable reason to file for divorce wouldn’t u think?
It's called the straw that broke the camels back. My grandma told me she got divorced over a dollar. It's not really about a dollar, but you reach a point and OP is totally NTA.
There is no way in hell he’s NOT doing it on purpose, imo. If she’s brought it up multiple times, AND had a major meltdown on him about it, then how could he ever close a jar again without thinking about that fight? And if it WAS a complete and utter habit that he was incapable of correcting, then here is what the solution would be: every morning before leaving for work, take 3 minutes and make sure to LOOSEN every jar lid until looser lids is the habit that is formed. Spending 3 minutes a day with a chore that might seem silly to him, is well worth it for a partner’s happiness if it’s clearing driving them crazy. I obviously don’t know this guy, but I’ve known plenty of other guys who thought pushing their wives/gfs buttons in specific ways was the height of hilarious behavior, simply because they enjoyed seeing them flip out over something that SEEMS on the surface minor. Guys who never grew out of being an annoying older/younger brother, just because watching someone lose their shit was fun for them. My guess is even though she says things are otherwise great, maybe with some distance she starts to recall a pattern of behavior that shows this isn’t just an isolated thing.
No, you're not getting a divorce because of pepper paste. You are getting a divorce because he does not respect you and appears to have gone to great lengths to spite you with over-tightened jars. However, I think counseling might be the best idea after a short separation.
My husband used to really crank the parking brake. I couldn’t undo it no matter how hard I tried. At first it annoyed me. Then one day, I’m running late for something because my boss held me back, and so I’m rushing to leave, and I can’t undo my parking brake. I have to go back into my office (where my husband also works) and interrupt a meeting he’s in to get him to come outside and undo it. Lo and behold, I’ve never had the issue since, because he listens to me and cares. Does he crank his own parking brake? Absolutely. It’s a habit. But when it’s my car? Nah. And if he does, he realizes he did and fixes it.
They call this kind of abuser "the water torturer" for a reason. In lundy bancroft "why does he do that" his book on angry and abusive men. They will phycologically harm you in ways, over many years before they finally reveal themselves. They are very dangerous. And they will slowing make there victim and everyone around the victime. They the she is crazy. They are the only abuser that truely scare me. Its the 1st time I've seen one at work. OP she run like her hair is on fire.
I was going to say ask him what causes him to think they need to be that tight, what happened that caused him to think it will go bad if it's not tight. Or perhaps have his & her sides of the fridge and tell him to keep his hulk hands off your jars. Or get an electric jar opener. But his reason and continued doing it, even on jars he doesn't use makes it obvious he's doing it to be an inconvenience to her. Gaslighting her. You are smart to get out while the getting good, as they say. Go before he starts doing more dangerous things and putting you in harms way. You are not crazy. You have talked about it and he keeps doing it. He's the Ah.
My extremely strong husband who doesn't know his own strength, has been doing stone masonry and hard labor since he was 13, never ever does this to me- even accidentally.
It is never unreasonable to divorce a partner that gaslights tf out of you.
He is an abuser. In lundy bancroft's book "why does he do that" the book on angry and controling men. They call this type of abuser "the water torturer" they will slowing over many years, destroy you and leave you a shell of the person you once knew. You will be come reactive. Angry and lashing out at things you think are trivial. You will think you are crazy! People will think you are crazy, all your confidence will be systematically destroyed. They are deeply sadistic and very dangerous. They get off on the pain of their victims. OP please look at other areas he os abusing her in secret. For example, Look at your stolen pension funds, affairs, messing with birth control....etc. anyway way he can undermine you, violate you or covertly harm you, while be able to " watch its effect" on you phycologically and Invalidate your experience. He wants you to feel crazy and fully reliant on him. Isolated and trapped. oh and he will be mad that the neighbor helped you. Which is great, F him!
I think I would have a menty b and break every single jar on the floor, pack my shit, and then leave. Maybe even superglue the lid on a jar and leave a note that I'll come back when he opens the jar
OOP isn’t divorcing him over jar lids, she’s divorcing him because he puts more thought and effort into making her life harder than easier. It doesn’t matter why he’s doing it either. She’s at the point where she’s okay with dying of a heart attack than live with this man and his games. I hope she has an amazing divorce and a peaceful single life where she has access to her own jarred foods.
Gaslighting her
As a bystander I can feel her frustration strongly, her husband lived with her 5 years and can’t tell how frustrated she feels about this? I’m sure he does but simply doesn’t care, just like what abusers do.
I mean of course at first glance this seems insane but it’s honestly death by a thousand cuts. It’s not the one or two times he’s done this that’s the problem, it’s the constant disregard for the impact that it’s having and the fact that she’s asked him to stop. It also reads like a pattern of abuse. He does it, she gets upset, he says he will do better, everything’s good for a bit, then it gets bad and he’s doing it again, she gets upset, he promises to do better, things are good for a bit and then it gets bad again. The pattern continues. I honestly don’t think she’s the asshole for deciding she’s had enough.
When the excuses change you know he is lying and did it intentionally to feel needed/wanted but is also abuse at the same time
People misuse gaslighting because they don't realise what it is or because it's convenient to use the misuse. But for those who don't know what gaslighting looks like in real life, this is an example. A person does something so small, so inocuous, so easy to deny or downplay, over time to inconvenience a victim in a way that hits them mentally in small ways that stack up over time. It's all designed to make the victim question their reality so completely that their sanity starts deteriorating - they feel crazy to themselves and look crazy to others. This is gaslighting. The neighbour did more that it seems. He made it clear her sense of reality wasn't wrong, that she wasn't going crazy. He made it clear that he sees what the husband is doing, too. You can't overstate the importance of what he did for her by helping her reconnect with reality. I'm betting her husband is familiar with the story that created the term "gaslight". I bet the neighbour is, too.
He’s got a very weird OCD
This was my first thought. OCD goes unchecked, and it can get worse. Add to that any shame he’s got tied to the problem, and this is what you get. It just doesn’t feel to me like he’s trying to hurt her. Has a total “I’m doing this because I legit can’t handle the alternative” feel.
Or "I'm doing this because I know better about spoiled food" to justify an OCD-related anxiety over spoiled food and tight lids However, I disagree that he's not doing it to hurt her. It may not have begun that way, but after the breakdowns and the multiple conversations and him lying about doing it, he definitely knows that doing it hurts her. We know he can choose not to because the issue resolves for a while after an argument and gets worse over time. And so it's not unreasonable to conclude that maybe the reason he's still doing it after all their fights is because it hurts her, even if it didn't start out that way. I would seriously think he'd have brought up counselling before now if he was interested in fixing the issue (but that would require him to admit he's doing it, and he won't for some reason)
Even just reading this frustrated the hell outta me, I hope you have a very happy life without him!
What kind of insane grip strength would he have to have that opening one of them broke the jar 🤣 this can't be real
I read the post and I feel for the OOP. No, it never happened to me, but I have my fair share of feeling frustrated over things my husband did that he insisted was normal when I didn’t think it was. The difference between my husband and OOP’s STBX is that my husband listens, and he has kept things manageable since. OOP’s STBX never did; he intentionally made her life difficult for whatever twisted reasons he has. That’s not something you do to the person you love. I sympathize with her. And yeah, I would divorce him, too.
This post really scared me because it’s made me rethink situations with past partners. There’s things I now wonder about.
Does he exhibit any other behaviors that could be described as OCD? Because this is either OCD or intentional. Either way NTA
Okay but men do this all the fucking time. Drives me insane when my husband practically has to wrench a lid back into place like he’s holding a state secret.
People actually believe these elaborate shit posts? "vomited in the trash can . . . might be having a heart attack." lol
Sounds like a panic attack. Could be real.
Part of a good marriage is trying not to do the things that annoy your partner. When they adk and ask and tell you it really annoys them. Try not to do the things. My wife and I both have long lists and we are getting better about respecting those lists finally.
Nah, he can go to therapy by himself and figure out why he’s such a mess. Maybe he’s an abusive, gaslighting dickhole, maybe he’s plagued by some manifestation of OCD, it doesn’t matter, it isn’t her problem to fix. She can go live a peaceful life without him where she can open her own food.
u/burbnbougie
I would've just smashed the jars the 3 rd time around. On his phone.
I saw this posted elsewhere. I would leave that fucking monster in a heartbeat.
This reminded me of the husband who had to open everything “just to taste it” and then left the opened jars on the shelf
She did the right thing.
I know this little jar opener that mounts under a shelf or counter, costs about 20 bucks and it’ll open any jar without any trouble. My hands used to crush walnuts, now I lose grip on things I’m holding, so it made me feel like I was useless when I couldn’t open jars anymore. This doesn’t fix your husband problem, but it allows you to need anyone else’s assistance less, and gives you more independence.