My husband (35m) and I (34m) have been together for 10 years. We are raising a toddler together, both work full time, and I keep the day-to-day of the house running (taxes, birthday parties, social planning, etc).

My husband works in healthcare and his schedule is random and unpredictable (commonly working evenings, weekends, and holidays). For this reason, I’ve always done the grocery shopping every week and do most of the cooking because my schedule is consistent.

He had the day off work yesterday while I worked from my company’s office. I was planning an impromptu trip to a local grocery store to grab some kitchen staples after work. I sent my husband my intended grocery list and asked him if there’s anything I could grab for him while there. He replied back that he was just leaving a different grocery store and had already grabbed half the stuff on my list.

I felt a little frustrated because we both know this is my responsibility. In the past, he’ll go to the store and buy random stuff - some things we need, duplicates of things we already have and don’t need, and things we do need but he doesn’t realize it. In terms of groceries, he doesn’t let recipes and meal planning guide his shopping. He’ll just buy random stuff.

Knowing his intentions were coming from a good place, I texted back and gently asked him to please stop doing this in the future. Logistically, it makes it much harder for me to figure what we do/do not need next time I go to the store and makes my job harder. It also doesn’t save me a trip to the store because there’s always staples we need that he didn’t pick up, and I’ll have to go back to the store to buy them anyways. We’ve done this song and dance many times before.

In the text I sent him, I acknowledged that I know he was trying to be helpful, but it actually makes grocery shopping much harder for me when I try to think of our grocery inventory and meal planning. This really hurt his feelings. He expressed he knows how much of the mental load I usually take on in our relationship, and he thought it would be helpful. He subsequently shut down and for the rest of the evening, gave me the silent treatment, and is harboring resentment against me.

Now I feel like the bad guy when, truly, I am just trying to keep a grasp on so many moving pieces in life (schedules, work-related projects, groceries, parenting a toddler, etc etc etc). Obviously there was a communication breakdown on both our parts in all this.

AITAH?