It wasn’t just food. It was everything. Cleaning products were apparently my responsibility since I did most of the cleaning.

The Netflix subscription was split 70/30 because he claimed I watched more shows. The laundry detergent was mostly on me because he claimed I had more clothes.

A little while later, I started doing laundry and remembered that Thomas had started asking me on Venmo for his share of the meals I cooked. If I made pasta with a special sauce that I knew he liked, he would happily eat it and then send me money for “his share,” as if our house was a restaurant and I was his waitress.

I tried to be patient. I figured Thomas just saw money as numbers on a spreadsheet, not as a sensitive subject like it is for many people. I hoped he would eventually relax and become more generous or think less about transactions.

As I folded the clothes, I wondered when this would happen. What I never imagined was what happened the following Monday.

***

It was a pivotal day for me. I was working from home and had an important presentation with a potential client who could double my freelance graphic design business. I had prepared for weeks, creating mockups and rehearsing my speech.

That morning, I set up my laptop in my office, checked my slides one last time, and made sure my webcam was working properly.

Five minutes before the call, my phone buzzed with a Venmo request for $20 from Thomas, who was already at work.

The description read:  “Wi-Fi usage fee. You work from home and I’m in the office.”

I looked at my phone, stunned. Twenty dollars for internet usage in our own home? The same internet we both pay for every month? The same internet he used every night to watch his YouTube videos?

That’s when something inside me snapped. It wasn’t the amount. $20 was insignificant in the grand scheme of things. It was what it represented. My husband was scamming me for a basic utility in our shared home, minutes before the most important business call of my year.

Somehow I managed to put it aside and finish my presentation. My potential client was impressed and asked me for a formal proposal before the end of the week.

Under normal circumstances, I would have been overjoyed and called Thomas immediately to tell him the good news. Instead, I sat at my desk, staring at that Venmo request, feeling a coldness spread through my chest.

That evening, after I finished work, I knew Thomas would be at the gym for at least two hours, so I stayed at my desk, opened a spreadsheet, and started calculating.

I tallied up every load of laundry I had done in the past two years. Every dish I washed. Every meal I cooked. Every time I went to the grocery store. Every time I cleaned the bathroom or vacuumed the living room. Every bill I paid. Every appointment I made.

I assigned each task an hourly rate based on our city’s market value for housekeeping, cooking, administrative work, and personal errands. When I finished, the total was $20,254.

I put it in the form of a professional invoice, listing each service, the hours spent, and the rate. I added a due date for payment: 30 days from today, just like any other invoice. I even included a late payment penalty clause.

After printing it out, I headed over to Thomas’s desk in the corner of our living room. I placed my bill right on top of it, so he wouldn’t miss it the next morning.

Then I went to our room and packed a bag. Nothing dramatic, just enough clothes for a few days, my laptop, and toiletries. I had already called my sister the week before, after the Wi-Fi incident, to ask if I could stay at her place if needed. She immediately agreed.

I didn’t sleep much that night. Thomas came home from the gym, showered, and went to bed, not noticing my packed bag tucked away in the corner of our closet. He fell asleep quickly, while I lay awake wondering if I was overdoing it.

But every time I started to doubt myself, I remembered all those Venmo requests, all those times my husband treated me more like a roommate than a partner.

Morning came, I got up early, made coffee and sat at the kitchen table with my phone, scrolling through emails without really reading them.

Thomas’s routine was predictable: he woke up at 7 a.m., went straight to his desk to check his accounts and plan his day, then came to the kitchen to have breakfast.

Just in time, I heard him moving around in the bedroom. His footsteps headed toward his desk, walking across the hardwood floor. There was silence for about 30 seconds, then:

“What is this?!”

His voice echoed through our small house as he stormed into the kitchen, bill clutched in his hand and face flushed with anger.

I took a calm sip of my coffee. “This is an itemized invoice for services rendered,” I replied calmly. “I thought you’d appreciate the detail since you’re so concerned about fair payment based on usage.”

Thomas stood in the doorway, his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. “This is ridiculous! Twenty thousand dollars for… for what? To do things around the house? Things you’re supposed to be doing anyway?”

“Really?” I raised an eyebrow. “Are cleaning supplies my sole responsibility because I do most of the cleaning? Is making a meal and charging you your share normal? Is sending your wife a bill for using the Wi-Fi in her own home while she works something spouses are ‘supposed’ to do?”

“That’s… that’s different!” he stammered, waving the paper in the air. “Those are real expenses!”

“And my time isn’t?” I asked. “Isn’t my work an expense? Isn’t the mental burden of running our household worthless?”

“You chose to do these things,” he insisted. “I never asked you to do more cleaning or cook more!”