AIO when I tell my stay at home wife that “she doesn’t do that much”?
Background:
I’m 29M, married to my wife (we will call Rachel 26F) for 5 years. We have a freshly 3 year old toddler, (Amber), a dog and another kid on the way.
For a while now my wife and I have struggled with division of labor and after yet another fight tonight over it I need to know if I’m overreacting or justified in how I’m feeling.
For context, my wife is a stay at home mom and I work full time+ as an entrepreneur running a handful of small business that we own out of our home. She does not do anything for the business other than being an extremely important stay at home parent to our kiddo. We decided early on in our marriage that this was our preferred dynamic with me as breadwinner and her staying home.
We thankfully live a relatively comfortable lifestyle. Our business allows us to maintain a nice home in a good MCOL area with good schools close to a lot of her family. I would not say we are affluent, but we do what we can to live within our means and are comfortable where we’re at.
Working from home makes division of labor in our home a tricky thing. There’s a natural tendency to have work and home bleed together when you work exclusively from home; more especially when you are running your own business and therefore making your own hours. For my wife it has meant that I should be readily available to do housework, chores, yard work, and childcare during my workday. If I’m going somewhere, I should be able to take my daughter with me and give mom a break. Throughout my workday I am often interrupted to do “quick chores,” and tasks that pull me away from the work I’m doing. If I decide to turn down these requests and continue working instead, it leads to enormous conflict between us.
From my perspective, hours not spent operating the business are hours (and therefore income) lost. Thankfully my business is in demand right now and my hours are worth a lot— but with AI really taking off that could honestly change sooner than we expect. Not to mention, lifestyle creep, inflation, rising prices and a whole host of large expenses (medical bills, new baby prep, home purchase, car purchase) means that I need to work more to keep up with our rate of spending.
So here lies the conflict. Spending is going up, so work hours need to go up if we want to stay out of bad debt. As hours go up for work, my hours available for other things need to diminish. I have already given up nearly all of my leisure time and “expendable” hours, so now it’s bleeding over into my share of the house/family responsibilities. We’ve talked many times about reducing our budget however wife says she is unwilling to reduce spending or compromise on lifestyle. Okay. Fine. This requires money to come from somewhere— that somewhere is me and my hours. So the issue is essentially she wants to have me around all the time but spend like I’m not.
Due to my increase in work hours I’ve tried to pass off some of what I do to my wife. This has resulted in accusations being thrown around and me getting chewed out for not wanting to help around the house but honestly I’m drowning and feel like I already do too much. Here’s an example of what my schedule looked like today:
7AM, I’m up and at the gym
8AM, return to home, shower get ready.
8:30AM, wake up our daughter if she’s not awake already. Make breakfast for both of us, take the dog out.
9:00 AM, workday starts. I turn on Miss Rachel while wife gets out of bed (often will sleep until 9:30AM/10AM but I can’t watch her until Rachel is all the way up.
9AM-12PM, Rachel stakes over, I go to work. Email, books, putting out fires, catching up on current projects, begin a handful of new ones.
12:00PM get ready to leave for client lunch. On my way out the door wife asked if I could reschedule so I could put our daughter down for her nap ???? (I put Amber down most days during my lunch break but told her specifically I couldn’t today due to client meeting). To be fair, she is pregnant and tired and having a hard time with pregnancy number 2. I told her I could not do that today because it is my first meeting with a potential client and I really want to win their business. She says that I “never help her with our daughter,” to which I point out that I put her down for naps almost everyday and do bedtime put downs (bath, bum change, tooth brushing, hair brushing, affirmations, PJs, 2 books, song, bed) 5 out of 7 nights per week. Not to mention making her breakfast everyday and intermediate times spent with her when wife is out doing errands and doesn’t want to take her. This does not end well, so I head out to the client meeting, wife being very pissed off.
2:00pm, return from client lunch to find daughter is watching TV and not down for a nap. WTF. Wife is on phone scrolling reels. She tells me that I can put our daughter down now. Want to explode, don’t. Go put daughter down.
2:30pm, daughter is put down. I go back to work. Wife wants to take a nap because she is tired. House is a wreck from morning of childcare. Dishes have piled up in the sink over a few days there’s a number of household tasks needing to be done that I know I need to do but am struggling to find time for. I ask if she can clean up a bit first. No.
2:30-5:00pm, business stuff. Lots of emails, spreadsheets, and slide decks.
5:00PM, end in-office work for the day (emails and texts will trickle in through most of the evening). Daughter is still in bed, wife is still in bed. I am hungry. Begin making dinner. Dishes are not done so clean dishes and kitchen and pick up the toys strewn about the house.
5:30pm, daughter stirs, wife goes to get daughter. I’m cooking dinner.
6:00pm, dinner as a family. Phones are put away, we make sure to spend 1 hour together with no distractions for family dinner.
7pm, wife and I clear away dinner while daughter goes to play in living room. Wife mentions lawn is getting long and bushes need to be pruned. I tell her I will do them this weekend and add it to my list. Dishes get put into the sink. I’m not doing dishes again tonight. I don’t think they will be until I am compelled to do them again.
7:45pm, go back into the home office to reply to a handful of urgent emails.
8:15pm, wife and daughter come into the office letting me know it’s bedtime. I’m still trying to deal with urgent email, I ask if she can do it. She says she’d like me to do it since I said I would. I ask again if she can do it anyways. No. I told her I’ll be done as soon as I can but it would be nice if she could at least bathe her while I’m wrapping things up.
9:00pm get to a stopping point go out to find daughter is watching bluey, wife again scrolling reels. Not bathed. I bite my tongue and go bathe our daughter, get her ready for bed and put down.
10pm, daughter is down. House is a wreck again from playing after dinner. Go back into office continue working until urgent project is finished.
12AM finished project, go to sit in family room for a bit and dissociate on my phone before bed. Wife confronts me because the house is a wreck and she thinks I’m working too much to help.
This is where overreacting maybe comes in. In our fight tonight I told her that I feel like she’s not doing anything and using pregnancy as an excuse to not do anything around the house. For instance, things that didn’t get done today that have been on our combined to do list:
Dog not walked
Dinner dishes not done
Main living areas covered in toys
Laundry not done
Not unfinished packing
Car needs oil change
Library books need to be returned
Furniture needs building
In sum I basically asked her what she had done today and she said “a lot” and refused to elaborate. I told her I don’t see what she has done other than be a warm body in the room with our daughter. I’m beyond my breaking point. I feel like I’m running a business and a household with a part time babysitter. Maybe I’m not seeing how hard it is to be a toddler parent all day but I’ve had days where I’ve taken off work and done a lot while still watching/playing with our daughter and keeping house. I feel like it’s not that bad— admittedly I’m not doing it pregnant so that must be considered, but ultimately I feel like I am doing my job and her job and am starting to lose it. Communication is breaking down. I love her, I wouldn’t want to live without her but I’m trying to see what she does everyday and I can’t figure out why I feel like I’m the only one doing things. Not to mention she will continue to pile on more as we go.
Maybe I’m just complaining too much. I dunno, Reddit am I overreacting to this whole thing?