I (33M) kind of started a fight at my wife (30F) over her wasting food. She and I had very different upbringings when it came to food. Her family had the disposable income to eat out multiple times per month, and her family would cook large meals (enough to feed an army basically), and when the food entered “leftover territory,” the rule in their house was whoever gets to it first gets to it. My family was much more money-minded, only eating out on special occasions and cooking just enough for one or two meals. Takeout was never shared, and if we had leftovers, it was equally distributed. Some would be surprised to learn this has caused a great deal of dispute in our marriage. My wife does the majority of the cooking, and she likes to order take in a lot, as we both have demanding jobs. Over our 10 year relationship, she has learned to cook in much smaller helpings as much of it would spoil. She’s not good about eating leftovers (the small of a lot of cold food makes her feel sick), so she tries to meal prep or cook just enough to cover 2 meals max as she knows letting food spoil irks me. When we have leftovers, I always let her know when her portion is still in the fridge. Typically she tells me to have it if I want it. She has said before that if she were truly coming back for it, she’d write her name on it or tell me not to eat it as she was saving it for later, but to my recollection she has never done that. I always tell her that the leftovers are her’s so she can have them, and we go back and forth like that in several rounds. The other night, we had leftover Chinese takeout (her leftovers, I ate mine). She asked me what I wanted her to cook for dinner and I reminded her that she has her leftovers. She said “oh yeah, hand it here.” So I gave her the container and I watched her dump it straight into the trash without looking at it. Wide-eyed, I asked her “what are you doing?” She proceeds to inform me that she has come up with a new system: if she tells me 3 times that I can eat her leftovers because she does not intend to come back for them, she will throw it out before it spoils. Apparently that was the 4th time I reminded her about the leftovers so that triggered the disposal. I got quiet to process the fact that she made this decision without talking to me about it, and finally I said she could have told me she was going to throw it out, then I would have eaten it. She firmly thinks that the statute of limitations expired as she told me 3 times I could have them, and she “could do with them what she sees fit.” I would have if I had known she’d toss them instead of conceding in eating them after understanding I truly didn’t mind her eating them herself. I feel like she truly hasn’t listened to/disregarded me feelings/upbringing with food. I told her “do you” and haven’t really talked to her since. So, AITA?

Tl;dr my wife has decided to throw away leftovers after she offers them to me 3 times and I don’t like wasting food