AITAH for not explicitly saying I’ve given the spa a heads up?
Husband and I are both in our 30s, been married 5 years. I’m honestly kind of confused about this situation, which has turned into multi-day silence so maybe y’all can help me figure out if I did something wrong and actually am the AH. For the long weekend, I had booked us a couples massage at a spa nearby because hubby had been complaining of back pain. Before the massage, he took off a bunch of items including his branded watch and put them on the small table in the room. This place generally only has a small dim table lamp for light. Long story short, my husband left his $$$ watch in the room on the way out and didn’t realize until a few hours after getting home, by which time the place had already closed. When he realized, he started panicking about if he’s going to get it back and asked if I can reach out to them to check since I had made the appointment and been the one in contact with them.
I texted them and they got back to me the next morning. Initially they told me they didn’t find anything but later in the day, they found the watch and sent me a picture, and I asked them to hang on to it for me and that we’ll pick it up at 7 pm. I texted hubby to let him know. For context, I work in an office all 5 days and have strict hours which are tracked, cellphone use is also discouraged during work hours so I wanted as little back and forth as possible, especially since it was an extremely busy day. Hubby is fully remote and has way more flexibility in hours and cell phone use. He texted back around lunch time that he might just take an uber and pick it up before then. It sounded like he wanted to use his lunch break to go get the watch so I asked him when he’s going so I can give the spa a heads up to expect him so there aren’t any hold ups because no one was available or because he wasn’t the one who reached out about it. He gets back to me 4 hours later with “heads up, I’m going there now?”. I replied with okay and let the spa know that he was on his way now and to expect him in 20 mins. He texts me again an hour later asking if I gave them a heads up, to which I said I did and asked why. He replied that he was waiting for my confirmation and now the ride prices are high so he’s going to have to wait until I get home to go. I told him I gave them a heads up when he said he was going there now. No reply.
We have a limited home gym which my husband uses for his workouts and I go to the onsite gym at work after I’m done for the day. Working out is a medical necessity for me but because he was waiting to go get his watch, I skipped my workout for the day and told him I’m leaving work so we can go pick up his watch like I said in the morning. He says he’s working out but asked me to come home. After I got home, he’s telling me he needs an hour to finish. I told him the spa is going to close before then so we need to go now and he can finish his workout when we’re back. He kept insisting, I admit that I lost my patience here a bit and told him that I’ve been going back and forth with both him and the spa all day and even skipped my workout so we can go before they close all for his watch and he’s coming off extremely ungrateful right now that he started a workout when I had told him exactly what time we’ll go and pick it up at and is telling me he can’t pause it for a half hour to go pick up his own stupid watch. He then started mouthing off about how he would’ve picked it up earlier if I’d confirmed that I had given the place a heads up. I told him i had replied to it saying okay, to which he kept repeating to show him when I had said that. I was driving at this point and he was refusing to pull up the texts on his own phone so I pulled over and opened up the texts. He then started yelling about what the connection is between saying okay and confirming that I gave them a heads up. I told him he was initially saying I didn’t reply, now he’s saying that’s not confirmation, and that worst case scenario would have been that he would go there and they would contact me before giving him his watch. He yelled at me that he’s had a bad day and he’s not going to keep going back and forth with me about this, then got out of the car and slammed the door shut to walk back to the house.
This is a trigger for me (people walking out during an argument and one that I’ve told him multiple times over the years to not do). I decided I was done trying to help him with this situation and he can figure out how and when he’s going to get his watch, so I went back to work to hit the gym. After I got home, he was sticking around in my vicinity but was stand-offish. No apology for walking out, yelling at me, being inconsiderate overall. It’s been silence for the last 2 days and I’m wondering if there’s actually something that I did or didn’t do that I need to apologize for? AITAH for some part of this? The only thing I can remotely think of is that I said “okay” and not “okay, I’ve given them a heads up” but given the context of the conversation, it’s reasonable to assume that I’ve given them a heads up or if it’s unclear, text back and confirm that okay means I’ve given them a heads up. None of it excuses yelling at me and walking out without coming back and apologizing for the behavior.
Posted Sep 10, 2026, 7:20 PM UTC