THE COLD SHOWER REVENGE

The cold shower started, as these things always did, with a forgotten valve. For nearly twenty years, one woman says, her husband has had one maddening habit: after using the shower, he fails to push the diverter valve back down. She says he's been tested for ADHD and doesn't have it, but that the routines people use to stay organized, lists, schedules, alarms, are "physically painful" for him. The result is always the same. She turns on the tub, expecting water from the spigot, and instead gets blasted with a surprise spray from the showerhead. Not once in a while, either. She says it has happened at least twice a month for "nearly twenty. fucking. years." Each time, he apologizes. Each time, she says, it's back again a week or two later. "At least twice a month I have a VERY unpleasant wakeup/cold shower," she wrote, describing years of cold shocks and repeated promises to do better. In her words, his apologies were worth little more than "the paper they were written on." She says she was tired of hearing that he was "getting better." Then came the day she snapped. After another cold shower, she said she "had just fucking had it." She filled a cup with cold water, walked over to where her husband was standing naked, and without warning threw it over his torso and face. She didn't stop there. She told him the apologies were meaningless. She said she was done being told things would improve. If she got a cold shower, he would too. "I refuse to be a second class citizen in my own home any longer," she wrote, adding, "I will instead make changes to treat him worse" if that was what it took. She also said she plans to keep doing it: every time she gets a surprise cold shower, he gets a surprise cold shower too. In later edits, she added more context about the dynamic at home. He often leaves "the last 10 or 20 percent of a task" for her to finish, she said, and if she handled things the way he does, she would "live in a sty." As for the shower itself, she clarified that she doesn't expect anything fancy, just that when she turns on the water, it comes out of the spigot. Instead, because the diverter is left in shower mode, the cold water sprays right back at her head. One commenter summed up her frustration bluntly: "Folks, you're misunderstanding her situation. She leans in to turn on the water EXPECTING IT TO COME OUT OF THE SPIGOT. Instead, shower mode is still in place and the water sprays out of the shower and onto her head. It is completely rude of the husband to not switch the water flow back to the spigot when he's finished showering. This is just basic etiquette."