AITA for locking up my “cash stash” after my partner kept “borrowing” from it?
I’m 30M, my partner is 31F. We’ve lived together for about 2 years, not married. We’re both working, we split bills in a pretty boring way: joint checking for rent/utilities/groceries, and our own accounts for personal stuff. Nothing fancy, just stable. I also keep a small amount of cash at home in a little metal box in the closet. It’s not some doomsday thing, it’s more like: if the card reader is down, if I need cash for a tip, if the ATM is acting weird. Usually like $300-400, sometimes less. I add to it whenever I get cash back or find a random 20 in a jacket.
Over the last couple months I started noticing the amount was off. At first I genuinely assumed I miscounted or took some and forgot. Then I found a folded note in the box that said “I borrowed 60, will replace Friday, sorry babe.” I asked my partner about it and she said she didn’t want to “bother me” and it was just for a couple things, she planned to put it back, and she left the note so I wouldn’t think it was stolen. I told her I’d rather she just asked me, because the whole point of having it is knowing it’s there. She apologized, said she gets anxious asking for money even if it’s not a big deal. Fine. Then it happened again. Another note, another amount, then one time no note at all. Each time it was “I was going to replace it” or “I had cash in my wallet but I forgot to swap it” or “it’s basically our money anyway.” That last line annoyed me because we literally have a shared account for “our money”, and this was my personal emergency cash that I keep track of.
So last week I bought a small cheap lock and put it on the box. I didn’t make a speech, I just did it. She noticed the next day when she was looking for ibuprofen in the closet and saw it. She got very quiet, then later told me it made her feel like I think she’s a thief. I said I don’t think she’s a thief, I think she’s been taking cash without asking, repeatedly, after I asked her to stop. She said it’s humiliating and “parent-child vibes” and that I could have just trusted her to pay it back. I said trust is kinda the issue, because I tried trusting the notes and it kept happening. Now she’s barely talking to me, and she moved some of her stuff into the guest room like she’s proving a point.
I’m not trying to punish her, I just want my small stash to actually be there when I need it. But I also get that putting a lock on it looks dramatic. AITA?
