Is my wife being unrealistic about her expectations of my work life balance?

[Anonymous]

OP, you do sound a bit clueless. Basically you had another baby and decided to do less at home. Why would you think that would turn out well? You need to open your eyes to what her experience is like.

Your wife is probably thinking about how things will be when she goes back to work. If you're the kind of guy who's constantly playing the "It's because of my job" card, then what about her job? Someone has to pick up the kid on time. Are you Mr. Special Job who just can't, so it's all on her? It seems like you lack boundaries and you're dumping that problem on her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Stupid struggles of people from majority culture is so entertaining.

A marriage headed for divorce.

“Majority culture”= not having 5 generations crammed into a 4br house in Ashburn where the women are entirely domesticated and the men are home for meals and baby making but otherwise hanging out at the Hooka bar. Yeah… such an amazing existence.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your wife is a lunatic. It may be because of the hormones and being lonely, but she’s being crazy nonetheless.

Working 5-10 extra minutes after 5pm every day, and having a 5 hour block of commitment (in lieu of flying to the west coast for four days) once a quarter does not make for a “less flexible job doing a stressful time” as another poster suggested.

Your wife is currently on mat leave and should be able to figure out two kids for one day. You already do morning drop off normally.

There is a zero percent change your wife is going back to work, just to warn you. She can’t handle a single snow day with two kids, so she sure isn’t going to handle balancing two kids and a job. Plan accordingly. And know that all the help you hire now she’ll insist on keeping when she continues to stay home.

I don’t think either of them ever have two kids for five minutes, let alone an entire day. This probably really threw the wife for a loop.
OP should take both kids for an hour or two in the morning when he takes the older one to daycare. And his wife should take them both in the afternoons, so she doesn’t have to worry about the OP working a few minutes late.

This thing where neither one of them ever takes both kids solo is insane.

This. She needs to learn to handle both kids. The only people I know who tried to do it this way - each parent has one at all times - got divorced. It is not sustainable and it breeds resentment and it’s terrible for the kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If I could suggest one subtle communication switch:

Snow days.

Try not to say “I can’t because of work thing xyz.”

Because if your wife was out of town or dead, you would figure it out, right? You don’t mean you would leave your four year old home alone while you went to the meeting.

So try saying “I think I should do work xyz and you should handle the snow day solo. It’s going to suck for you, but if I bail on this meeting, I’m going to take a huge hit on performance.” Because that’s accurate. Then see if you have any ideas to help at all, like “I could order in dinner, and I can definitely sign off by 5:30.” Or “Maybe I could take them Saturday morning and you could get some solo time.” or whatever. Or maybe your wife’s cups are full, and she just says “no problem, I’ve got it.” But you have a three month old and you seem quite selfish, so I think her cups probably aren’t.

This is so stupid. If she were out of town or dead, yes, he'd handle it. And if my aunt had a penis, she'd be my uncle.

She's not out of town or dead. People deal with the what is in front of them. The OP had two c-suite presentations on the snow day, and she was available to watch the kids. It is just lunacy to suggest that because he would have rearranged his schedule in the most dire circumstances he should do so because . . . why exactly?

Also, to look at the schedule he usually keeps, and the amount that he does, and call him selfish, is equally insane.

[Anonymous]

I would look into PPD because yes she is being irrational.
My husband helped a lot when our kids were babies and still does now that they're elementary age. He also hasn't been promoted in 8 years. I'm sure she wouldn't trade with me.

[Anonymous]

Stop working at night after your wife goes to bed. Do your work earlier and go to bed when she goes to bed.

1). Not getting enough sleep makes you tired and irritable, and you are probably not actually taking over mornings the way you think you are.

2). Your wife doesn’t see you working, so she doesn’t know how much you are actually doing. She just sees you sleeping later.

3). This very likely ends in your looking at porn instead of being nice and lovey dovey to your wife and initiating sex with her at least some of the time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Stupid struggles of people from majority culture is so entertaining.

A marriage headed for divorce.

“Majority culture”= not having 5 generations crammed into a 4br house in Ashburn where the women are entirely domesticated and the men are home for meals and baby making but otherwise hanging out at the Hooka bar. Yeah… such an amazing existence.

The American grandchildren won’t be living that way when they’re adults. Guarantee.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, you do sound a bit clueless. Basically you had another baby and decided to do less at home. Why would you think that would turn out well? You need to open your eyes to what her experience is like.

Your wife is probably thinking about how things will be when she goes back to work. If you're the kind of guy who's constantly playing the "It's because of my job" card, then what about her job? Someone has to pick up the kid on time. Are you Mr. Special Job who just can't, so it's all on her? It seems like you lack boundaries and you're dumping that problem on her.

The person on leave takes care of the kids during the work day. This isn’t remotely controversial.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I struggled with work life balance early in my career, but things have improved since I started working 100% remote for a company based on the west coast.There’s a flexible culture around time off, which has been great to spend more time with our two kids (4yrs, 3 months). As a result, I never work/take my laptop with me on vacations or work on weekends. Sometimes I’ll work in the evenings to catch up on stuff, but I’ll do that when wife/kids have gone to sleep. I have to travel to our home office once a quarter for 4 days at a time for planning meetings, but I usually schedule my flights to minimize impact to family life (leave late Sunday afternoon, return Thursday night or Friday am on red eye). Another plus is that I’m able to attend daytime events at our 4 yr olds school, which is really meaningful to me.

DW is still on maternity leave for another month with the 3 month old, while our four year olds preschool is a 5 min drive.

Due to most of my coworkers being west coast based, mornings are slow, so I’ll take the 4 year old to preschool. At 5 PM, DW leaves to pick 4 yo up, and I take over with 3 mo old. However, it’s not uncommon to have lots of requests and meeting in the afternoon, so sometimes I won’t sign off until like 5:05 or 5:10, which bothers DW because she likes to pick up 4 yo at a consistent time.

I recently moved into a management role, which has me much busier during the day, in and out of lots of meetings, and doing admin work in my downtime. As a result, a lot of days, I’ll only have time for a quick lunch, which means I don’t have the time to do the household tasks I was able to do before (folding laundry, dishes, etc) When I come down and eat quickly, DW always remarks something like “you want to spend some time with your kid?”

However, things came to a head this week with DW and I regrading work life balance. Our quarterly planning meeting was this past week. Due to my new role, I was told that I only needed to be involved in one days worth of meetings. It didn’t make sense to travel cross country for one day, so fortunately I could join remotely. Unfortunately, the one day would involve two presentations that I’d be giving to different csuite members, so I felt it necessary to spend a great deal of time preparing these presentations.

Of course, the day I was scheduled to give these presentations, the shit hit the fan on the home and work front. Our 4 year olds school had a snow day so she was home, which is always a challenge. ILs are local and they’d normally help in this situation, but they were out of town. I helped out with the kids for about an hour in the morning, but then lots of work related fires had to be put out, which resulted being called into meeting, which then dovetailed into my presentations for the csuite. I basically didn’t leave my desk for 5 straight hours, which, I can’t stress enough, is incredibly rare, even in my new position. Along the way in this madness, DW texted me “we’re all doing great down here, thanks for checking in!”

A day later, DW tells me that she feels that I have an unhealthily work life balance, and I’m not prioritizing our family’s needs over work. She pointed out that she would drop everything at work if it was a snow day, so why shouldn’t I do the same. I see her point, but at the same time, this was an impossibly unusual circumstance, and I can’t just not attend a meeting where I’m presenting to the csuite.

I guess I just don’t know what she is expecting of me. Yes, I can work harder to ensure that I log off by 5, but at the end of the day, I think my situation is really great. I know many other people in much worse situations (having to go into an office, lots of travel, regularly working on vacations). I’m truly trying to understand my wife here, but I just don’t understand how one very bad day, along with signing off 5-10 minutes after 5 pm equates to not prioritizing my family over work. Am I totally off base here?

OP, quite obviously your wife is being unreasonable (and passive aggressive, which is annoying by itself). You have a schedule and flexibility that others only dream of.

The bolded is all you need to see. If she is complaining that you aren't taking time out of your workday any longer to do household chores, she has completely unrealistic expectations. And the "pencils down at 5:00 every day so you aren't picking up from daycare 5 minutes later that usual" is equally unrealistic for many jobs.

All that said, she's probably hormonal, and functioning on lack of sleep. I'd wait to try to talk sense to her.

[Anonymous]

When I was a SAHM I actually found it harder when my DH was working from home during Covid than when he went into the office.

It was hard for me for him to be physically present but not mentally...even if he was working.

I solved this by constantly leaving the house and taking the kids to parks + playgrounds. Would come back for lunch. Playdates or backyard time. Back inside around 2pm for naps and would get lucky sometimes when he would be done working early & we could hang out. Otherwise I used this time to do chores. Whatever chores didn't get done he would help me with after his work.

Be understanding OP and just ask your wife how you can help her. I suspect she won't ask much from you.

[Anonymous]

Does anyone think it's odd that Op has time for typing all these paragraphs. And it could have been explained in one or two.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When I was a SAHM I actually found it harder when my DH was working from home during Covid than when he went into the office.

It was hard for me for him to be physically present but not mentally...even if he was working.

I solved this by constantly leaving the house and taking the kids to parks + playgrounds. Would come back for lunch. Playdates or backyard time. Back inside around 2pm for naps and would get lucky sometimes when he would be done working early & we could hang out. Otherwise I used this time to do chores. Whatever chores didn't get done he would help me with after his work.

Be understanding OP and just ask your wife how you can help her. I suspect she won't ask much from you.

Your last sentence…hahahahhahaha…..did you even read the post?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Stupid struggles of people from majority culture is so entertaining.

A marriage headed for divorce.

“Majority culture”= not having 5 generations crammed into a 4br house in Ashburn where the women are entirely domesticated and the men are home for meals and baby making but otherwise hanging out at the Hooka bar. Yeah… such an amazing existence.

The American grandchildren won’t be living that way when they’re adults. Guarantee.

The parents didn’t live that way when they were adults. They moved to the US from their home country.

[Anonymous]

Not the point I know, but this is a real downside of the WAH lifestyle. When you’re physically at home, people have expectations that you’re gonna help fold laundry and watch kids. It forces you to be in two places at once because you are. This doesn’t work well for lots of jobs.

I get that people love the flexibility and commutes suck, etc. But you have to do your own form of compartmentalization if you work from home.

[Anonymous]

It’s all hands on deck. You have an infant and a preschooler and you’re still adjusting to two kids. Your wife is dealing with postpartum hormones and constant middle of the night wake ups.

Who gets up with the baby?

EVERYTHING is hard at this stage of life and even the best most flexible job isn’t sufficiently flexible for this stage. Instead of asking if she’s unreasonable, go roll up your sleeves and assume you’re both giving 300% right now because that’s what it’s going to take.

And if the transition to two has been “easy” for you, this is the problem. Because it isn’t. And if it’s easy for you, you aren’t paying attention.