Right now, my wife is finishing up her last day of work at her current job. Her boss has been on again/off again toxic and she had enough. She’s got another job lined up right away on Monday.
The past two weeks since she put her notice in, it’s been nothing but a torrent of praise of all of her contributions. Every day she’s been emotional about someone telling her how much they value her and are going to miss her. Taking her out to lunches, numerous emails and texts of positive affirmation.
Her new job comes with a HUGE sacrifice on my end. Not only do I have to do school pickups for our four kids, I had to forgo my remote days (2x a week), so I can depart an hour or so earlier to be the one to pick them up every day. Now I also have the sole responsibility to bring them to appointments.
Now, here’s what falls on my plate:
- Morning school prep (Make Breakfast, Lunches)
- Pickups
- if children are sick, I have to be the one to work from home/PTO
- Dinner, given she will just be getting done at work
- Homework supervision
- Bedtime routines
- Cleaning
On top of this, she wants more things off of her plate, like playdate organization and activity planning.
I’m super hurt by this. And she thinks I’m not supportive of the job change for her. What she doesn’t realize is that my anxiety is through the roof of managing even more things while being the primary breadwinner.
It’s so unfair.
She gets complimented for everything she does. No one ever thanked me for my time at work, usually just a brief “see ya”.
She gets less and less on her plate, pretty much by brute force. “About time, husbands don’t realize how good they have it.”
She gets everything she wants. Time, space, possessions. She’s the gatekeeper of our intimacy and doesn’t desire me.
I’m always concerned for her, and compliment and reassure her of any insecurities. She will not even flinch if I have an anxiety attack.
I just want to scream.
I do the same exact thing like you, since I work from home and have a very flexible schedule, except picking up the kids. School bus does all that. I’m actually ok with it. I love my family and enjoy doing all this to make them happy. The only difference is that my wife is very thankful and she always makes sure she lets me know that. She always mentions how she appreciates what I do and she makes sure to do as much as she can when she can. She just got a new full time job and is very happy with it. Her having a full time job has helped us tremendously as a family. It’s a team effort. She happened to work in office and I’m at home, why not use that to save on daycare and babysitting? You need to communicate with your wife. Whatever you said here on Lemmy needs to be said to HER. She needs to know that. Maybe she is oblivious to all of this and being honest with her will fix things? You won’t know until you’ve done it. Talk to your wife, friend. Wish you the very best, and hope things work out for y’all.