AIO, my wife believes in strict gender roles?
So for some context my wife and i (both 29 yrs old) are both fairly religious Christians but she and her family take it more seriously than I do. Before we married we discussed that she wants a traditional marriage where she is SAHM. I would be fine with her working but I do believe a man should be a provider so this is fine with me too and that's what we've done. She said she didn't like modern men who do things like wear a baby sling or push a stroller and I was fine with that.
Our first child was born a bit over 4 yrs ago and then our second a little under 2 years later. When our kids were young I admittedly did not help with them very much. She had a lot of help from both her mom and mine, and I also was working long hours in these days. So I never changed a diaper, maybe fed them a couple of times. If I tried to step in she would generally wave me off and say I shouldn't worry about it so I didn't. Her mom actually lived with us until my youngest was about 6 months old and still visits fairly often. Her sister sometimes comes over to help too. So she definitely has her "village" so to say.
But now that the kidss are getting older and I'm working less, making more money, I honestly want to be involved more. But it's like she doesn't want me to do anything for them ever. She always brushes me off and says that's a woman's job, I shouldn't be doing that, and even that our kids shouldn't see a man picking up dirty laundry or making them snacks. I think that's weird, my parents have a traditional marriage but my dad still did stuff like that from time to time and I turned out fine. If she sees me playing with them she usually doesn't look happy and tries to distract them from it after a little while. This is getting really bothersome because those are my kids too. I would think most women would be happy their husband wants to do stuff like that.
It all kind of finally came to a final straw the other day when i had a day off work. I secretly turned off her alarm in the night so she could sleep in that morning. I woke up early, bought her some flowers and made the kids breakfast (there was some for her too when she woke up). I'm not gonna lie, we haven't had sex in awhile either and that was part of my thinking here. But I thought it would be a nice thing to do for her and a nice morning to spend with the kids and it was. I thought maybe we could all go to the park later since it was a nice day.
My wife ended up waking up around 7 AM (normally 5:30 or 6 for her) and came down to see what was going on. I could see that she was hiding her anger for the kids. She smiled and said isn't that a nice thing daddy did but the look she gave me was glaring. Then she said to my 4 year old son why don't you take your sister to watch tv. When they went to the next room she started whispering quietly at me like, what the hell were you thinking, why would you do something like that, why would you let me sleep in, do you think I'm a bad mother?
Honestly this kinda got my hackles up because I did nothing wrong here and I retorted, do you think I'm a bad father? Why do you never want me to do anything with the kids? She flat out denied it and said that is not true, she just doesn't want me overstepping in to take on women's work. It's setting a bad example and I'm acting woke (and all these other things). So I asked her what she DOES think it's okay for me to do for/with the kids and she kinda stopped for a second like she didn't really have an answer. Then she said it's a father's job to be a provider and disciplinarian.
I was like, that's it? You think I'm here to make a paycheck and yell at them if they do something bad? And she got upset and said NO it's just not my job to take over mother's roles and it makes me less of a man and her less of a woman.
At this point we were both starting to raise our voices and I looked into the next room and I was like can we please try to calm down, we don't need to scare the kids. Can you honestly explain to me why it's a problem for a father to make his kids breakfast and buy his wife flowers? But she just got more upset and said if I didn't understand then I'm not the man she married and I'm not godly.
Honestly I just gave up and went out and spent the rest of the day walking around the mall and doing some errands. I came home and the kids were in bed and she didn't speak to me and I slept in the guest bedroom. It's been a couple days now and we still haven't talked and frankly I don't even know what to say to here. The more I think about it the more upset I get. I keep trying to see it from her perspective and all I can think is maybe it wasn't right for me to change her alarm because she might have had things she wanted to do that morning but this is obviously much bigger than that.
AIO to this? Should I try to find some compromise with her or what?