Margaret heaved a weary sigh as she stared at yet another cookbook her husband had casually tossed onto the kitchen table. Two months into retirement, she’d imagined blissful days in her cozy Sussex cottage, surrounded by skeins of wool and fabric for her beloved quilting. Instead, her dreams had shattered like a china teacup dropped on a stone floor.
Her husband, Nigel, had somehow transformed overnight. Now that she was home all day, he acted as though her time belonged exclusively to him. No more simple shepherd’s pie or roast dinners—oh no. He’d taken to scrolling through gourmet blogs and declaring, without consultation, “Tomorrow, you’ll make beef Wellington with truffle jus!” as if she were his personal chef rather than his wife.
Nigel had spent decades managing a factory in Manchester, accustomed to barking orders and micromanaging every detail. But at home? He’d become a full-blown domestic dictator. Every evening, he’d leave her a to-do list as if she were his beleaguered PA rather than his spouse. “You’re retired—you’ve got all the time in the world!” he’d snap whenever she dared protest, his words cutting deeper than a paring knife.
Margaret tried pushing back, timidly mentioning her quilting group or her plans to join the local gardening club. But Nigel only scoffed. “What, you’ve nothing better to do? I’m giving you purpose!” Her hobbies gathered dust, shoved into cupboards for lack of time, while resentment brewed inside her like an over-steeped pot of Earl Grey.
And then there were the newspapers. “I need the Telegraph by breakfast, mind,” Nigel would say, utterly oblivious to the storm outside or the ache in her knees. Rain, sleet, or gales—she was expected to trot down to the newsagent so he could grumble about politics over his toast. Margaret didn’t feel like a wife anymore; she felt like a glorified butler.
Desperate, she’d started sneaking glances at job listings online. Any job—part-time, freelance, even shelf-stacking at Waitrose—seemed preferable to Nigel’s endless demands. But when he caught her browsing vacancies, he erupted. “Your priority is looking after me, not gallivanting off to some dead-end job!” His words echoed in her ears, each one another brick in the wall of her frustration.
Why did men like Nigel assume their wives orbited around them like satellites? She wasn’t a live-in housekeeper—she was a person, with dreams and interests of her own! Caring for a loved one was one thing, but Nigel was perfectly healthy, just monumentally entitled. She remembered tending to her ailing mother with love, not obligation. But this? Being treated like an unpaid skivvy? That wasn’t love—that was servitude.
Last night, staring at yet another list (Polish the silverware, starch his shirts, pick up his dry-cleaning), Margaret reached her breaking point. She wanted to laugh, to cry, to fling his wretched notepad out the window. Instead, she quietly closed her laptop and whispered to herself, “I’m exhausted. But I’m not done yet. And I’ll find a way to claw my life back—one way or another.”