Let's start with a quite philosophical question — can a good deed be considered really good if we subconsciously expect reciprocal favors or gratitude from those we help? Or, from their relatives or friends. To be honest, I don't know the exact answer to this question...
But for user AnnieG1986, the author of today’s story, everything, apparently, was quite obvious. At least she, being very supportive of her now-late father-in-law during his recent illness and subsequent sad events, expected that her husband would then reciprocate the favor for her own parents. But, as it turns out, to no avail.
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The author of the post has elderly parents who live separately and decided to go on vacay recently
Image credits: Alan Morales / Pexels (not the actual photo)
The parents have some anxiety over frequent burglaries in their area, so they asked the daughter and neighbors to look after their house
Image credits: AnnieG1986
Image credits: Masood Aslami / Pexels (not the actual photo)
So, the author asked her husband to do these rides, twice a day for 5 or 6 day slots, about 15 minutes by bike
Image credits: AnnieG1986
Image credits: Timur Weber / Pexels (not the actual photo)
The man, however, refused, claiming that he's quite unhappy over this idea
Image credits: AnnieG1986
The wife was disappointed — especially since she had been so supportive of his own late father and expected a favor, too
So, the Original Poster (OP) tells us that she and her husband live about 15 minutes by bike from her parents. Her mom and dad recently decided to go on vacation and, since they are afraid of burglaries, which have recently become frequent in their area, they asked the neighbors for help. Just go in every day, morning and evening, raise and lower the curtains — and check everything.
However, the neighbors for some reason won’t always be able to do this, so the couple asked their daughter to do this on the days when the neighbors are busy. And she, in turn, asked the spouse — fortunately, he works from home and they have no kids with all these school runs. This turns out to be about 5-6 days — not in a row, in the morning and in the evening, before and after his work.
The woman expected that the husband would readily agree — especially since the in-laws have always been very kind and supportive of him, and she had helped a lot earlier, when his own father fell ill and then passed away. She took on many of the chores and organizing the funeral, too. So now imagine her surprise and even disappointment when the spouse said that he’s unhappy with this.
Moreover, according to the author herself, “he was very confrontational and angry,” and when the wife reminded him that she was so supportive during his dad’s situation, he became even angrier. The man said that these two situations could not be compared in any way. In general, our heroine was incredibly upset and decided to enlist the support of netizens.
Image credits: Pavel Danilyuk / Pexels (not the actual photo)
First, let's do some simple arithmetic. Twice fifteen minutes there and back — that's an hour a day just for the rides. And you still need to go into the house, check everything and whatnot. In other words, it turns out that the original poster is trying to convince her husband to spend quite a lot of his time actually indulging her parents' anxiety.
Moreover, there is always an alarm system — and the author herself admitted that her parents' house also has one, but they don’t want to turn it on, because they trust the "human factor" more than technology. However, it’s quite possible that the OP's parents simply don’t want to risk their home insurance.
After all, actually making your home more secure is likely to reduce your home insurance premiums. "Some providers offer a discount if you have insurer-approved door and window locks, or a burglar alarm fitted," this dedicated article on Go Compare reasonably states. However, some commenters rightly noted that if the alarm isn’t turned on, then in the event of a burglary, the homeowners won’t receive compensation.
Be that as it may, the responders sided with the author's spouse, noting that he has every right to refuse these trips — especially immediately before and after work. In any case, people advised them to simply turn on the burglar alarm — and stop worrying. So the original poster responded that she would definitely try to talk to her parents about it. By the way, what do you, our dear readers, think of this story?
People in the comments, however, mostly sided with the husband, and simply urged the author to turn the burglar alarm on and call it a day
