I've started throwing a cup of cold water over my husband every time he keeps to his lazy bathroom habits - I've been called 'bitter' but I'm tired of his excuses

Daily Mail​

01-07-2025

A woman who began launching a cup of cold water over her husband as payback for his not switching the shower head has been criticised as 'bitter'.
For 20 years, the unidentified woman has been asking her husband to switch the shower valve - the rod that sprays water from the shower head when up, and fills the bath from the tap when down.
Most mornings, she steps in expecting the water to come from the tap and heat up there but, as she told the popular Reddit forum Am I The A**hole, she is instead met with a spray of freezing cold water.
In an expletive-filled post, the woman wrote: 'For nearly twenty. f***ing. years. I have been asking him to push that down. Since I was literally a teenager, I have been asking him to push that f***ing thing down.
'At least twice a month I have a VERY unpleasant wakeup/cold shower, because I turn the water on, and I get a cold spray from the shower. And every f***ing time he's apologetic, and then a week or two later, it happens again.
'He will do better for a while, and then it slips in again. He is always telling me that he's working on it, and hasn't he been better about it lately. But somehow he's always working on it, always improving, but it never f***ing stops.
'Today I had just f***ing had it. I stepped into the shower, turned it on and had a very cold and rude awakening.
'I couldn't f***ing take it anymore. I grabbed the cup by the sink and filled it about 3 inches with cold water, and walked out to where he was standing naked. He had just taken off his pajamas and was going to take his shower after mine.
'Without warning, while he was looking down, I held that plastic cup firmly in my hand and I jerked that mother***er in a 45 degree angle to get that cold water all over his torso and face.'
The woman told her husband she was tired of listening to him 'congratulate himself for "getting better".'
She continued: 'I told him that from now on, every time I'm taking a cold shower, so is he.
'That I refuse to be a second class citizen in my own home any longer, and if he refuses to make changes to treat me better, I will instead make changes to treat him worse, because I will not tolerate this any more.
'I'm going to continue to surprise-throw a cold cup of water on him every time I get a surprise cold shower.
'I'm tired of f***ing begging for basic f***ing respect and not getting it, with the implication that I have to f***ing put up with this forever.
'So, I know I'm probably an a**hole... but am I a justified a**hole?'
Obviously at the end of her tether, the woman's post sparked furious debate and racked up over 10,000 comments.
Many were arguing that she was justified in refusing to tolerate insensitive behaviour any longer, while others felt she could easily fix the issue herself.
One person wrote: 'For nearly 20 years you could have learned to take two seconds to look at it yourself. This is a you problem, not him.'
An apparent majority of commenters shared this view, questioning why the woman steps into the shower immediately.
One comment read: 'I'm honestly scratching my head at getting into the shower before the water goes on.
'Even if it's coming out of the tub faucet hot, the initial shower water will be cold. Plus, who wants to stand there naked and cold waiting for the water to heat?'
But others were sympathetic, arguing that her behaviour is not pure hysteria, but the culmination of decades of harboured frustration.
A commenter said: 'Can we consider the possibility that, when someone has reached the level of throwing a cup of cold water in their spouse's face, that it's not about the one minor annoyance?
'The post is pretty clear here. This is not "my husband is a caring and supportive member of the household 99 per cent of the time, but has this one blind spot".
'This is "I have spent 20 years turning myself inside out to get this person to make baby steps in pulling his weight, and nothing ever gets better."
'She feels trapped and powerless, so she's behaving like a petty a**hole. She should have left long before she got to this point.'
Even responders who empathise with the woman's situation are aghast at her unusual bathroom habit of standing in the tub while the water heats up.
'You get in the shower or the tub and then turn the water on?' asked one incredulous commenter.
'You don't run the water for a few seconds to let it warm up? This makes zero sense to me.
'In my over 40 years on this planet, I have never gotten into a shower or the tub and then turned the water on because I know 100 per cent of the time, the water will be ice cold.
'So, either I am standing in ice cold water in the tub because the diverter is down, or I am jumping out of the way because the diverter is up.
'All of this, literally ALL OF THIS could have been avoided if you simply turned the water on before you got in. I can't be the only person who finds this bizarre.'