Wife expects me to be "on" after a work trip

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:She should suck it up and take care the kids and extra day. Traveling is rough and she's totally inconsiderate. Typical.

When the bitter MRAers find a thread...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“Team wife. Unless she SAH, then team husband.”


So are we not allowed to be human and need help/ sleep too? What an absolutely ruthless and ignorant thing to write.

When you stay home you do not need as much brain power as someone who works in an office. To support you, no less. Get over it.

You also get zero breaks from your kids. At least when I’m at work I can use restroom privately.

This is a you problem. Close the door and have some rules and boundaries.

DP, the boundary is the closed door. But hat doesn’t mean someone won’t start knocking on the door because they knocked over the dog’s water bowl or Larla took Darla’s crayons. My co-workers generally don’t track me down in the restroom and start banging on the stall door, they let me get back to my desk before hitting me with the current crisis.

Still a you problem. When my kids knock at the door, I let them explain the problem and then ask 2 questions -- is anyone bleeding? is everyone still alive? If the answer is yes to both, I tell them it can wait until I'm done. (unless the story involved potential water damage).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Funny, all the world bank and IFC moms I know fly a 12 hour flight back and can’t wait to play with or talk with their children. They even Immediately wake up and go to the evening or early morning swim meets or games. And sometimes have to do latam red eyes.

And before they go on a short or long trip, they have to type up the family schedule hour by hour for their spouse and nanny to not forget something.

So, so true. I am so tired of hearing DC's dad whine about how he's so jet lagged after his 3 week business trip that he can't stay to visit the full time with DC. Yet, I have full custody and when I come back from an overseas trip on the red eye, things just carry on as normal. It's the professional version of a man cold -- "I worked so hard at the office, I can't possibly fulfill my responsibilities."

In fairness to OP, early in this thread he heard the feedback and acknowledged that he needed to adjust his behavior, so credit to him for that.

[Anonymous]

Totally Team wife. You have options when you are out of town, she doesn't.

[Anonymous]

Agree with most pp’s but will add:

Op: do both of you agree with the current nighttime parenting approach? Just asking because we sleep trained all of our kids. I’m just envisioning a scenario where the wife is super lax about sleep and more of an attachment-style parent (and won’t let husband get tough) while expecting the husband to share 50% of the night wakings that result...because in that case I say -if she refuses to let the kids fuss etc- she needs to deal with the consequences.

If you’re both happy with parenting strategy then 50/50.

[Anonymous]

Every woman with a man-child spouse like this needs to plan an out of town trip for a week every quarter. Under no circumstances should you provide a guidebook for how to care for the children when you're gone (yes, this won't be great for your kids in the short term, but it will be in the long term, and they'll survive it). The family calendar is available. That's it. And, no, his mom is not allowed to visit that week.

This will serve as a quarterly reminder of how much your man-child spouse does not want to be you. He will whine and complain about it and bitch and moan at you when you get back about "what you did to him." That serves as your reminder to book your next quarterly trip, because he still has a along, long way to go.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Every woman with a man-child spouse like this needs to plan an out of town trip for a week every quarter. Under no circumstances should you provide a guidebook for how to care for the children when you're gone (yes, this won't be great for your kids in the short term, but it will be in the long term, and they'll survive it). The family calendar is available. That's it. And, no, his mom is not allowed to visit that week.

This will serve as a quarterly reminder of how much your man-child spouse does not want to be you. He will whine and complain about it and bitch and moan at you when you get back about "what you did to him." That serves as your reminder to book your next quarterly trip, because he still has a along, long way to go.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Every woman with a man-child spouse like this needs to plan an out of town trip for a week every quarter. Under no circumstances should you provide a guidebook for how to care for the children when you're gone (yes, this won't be great for your kids in the short term, but it will be in the long term, and they'll survive it). The family calendar is available. That's it. And, no, his mom is not allowed to visit that week.

This will serve as a quarterly reminder of how much your man-child spouse does not want to be you. He will whine and complain about it and bitch and moan at you when you get back about "what you did to him." That serves as your reminder to book your next quarterly trip, because he still has a along, long way to go.

+1

Excellent. And yes,
No shopping in grandma to coddle ManChild

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Funny, all the world bank and IFC moms I know fly a 12 hour flight back and can’t wait to play with or talk with their children. They even Immediately wake up and go to the evening or early morning swim meets or games. And sometimes have to do latam red eyes.

And before they go on a short or long trip, they have to type up the family schedule hour by hour for their spouse and nanny to not forget something.

Correct, because they have NANNIES.

What does a 30-50 hour a week nanny have to do with weeknights or weekends?

ManChild is such the $hit that he wants around the clock nannies to raise his kids for 18+ years? Oh let me guess, thank goodness he works all the time and so hard for so much money to pay $50k in childcare a year. What an excellent trade off. Throw some money, no responsibilities, everything good, next!

You know, if you were so great at your job and industry you’d be able to call your own shots better regarding on/off hours, travel, hiring more people, etc.

[Anonymous]

Team wife. Suck it up.

[Anonymous]

Team husband. Wife does not have the hassles of traveling and enjoys being home in the week. Make the effort and stop being such a whiner.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Team husband. Wife does not have the hassles of traveling and enjoys being home in the week. Make the effort and stop being such a whiner.

She is working full time and handling three children, including all the wake-ups. For a full week. Husband should be weeping with gratitude that she handles everything and enables him to focus exclusively on his job.

[Anonymous]

I clicked on this thread expecting that all the DH wanted was to decompress for 30 minutes after he got home from the airport. But no, DH thinks he deserves compensatory time off from parenting due to the oh-so-hard situation of having an entire week off to himself to work and nothing else. WTF. Probably should have stopped with 1 kid.

[Anonymous]

As for sleeping in the hotel room ... OP needs to do some problem solving (instead of relying on his wife to solve his problems.) I have chronic anxiety and insomnia, and I have diligently figured out ways to deal with them so I can function as a parent and an employee. I get that sleeping in a hotel can be uncomfortable, but you need to learn techniques to deal with it: turn up the AC for white noise, earplugs, face mask. Do some hard cardio in the morning if you feel groggy, and do some easy yoga at night and meditate. No screens after 9pm. Light drinking only, and no alcohol after 7pm. No coffee after 1pm. Light dinner.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Every woman with a man-child spouse like this needs to plan an out of town trip for a week every quarter. Under no circumstances should you provide a guidebook for how to care for the children when you're gone (yes, this won't be great for your kids in the short term, but it will be in the long term, and they'll survive it). The family calendar is available. That's it. And, no, his mom is not allowed to visit that week.

This will serve as a quarterly reminder of how much your man-child spouse does not want to be you. He will whine and complain about it and bitch and moan at you when you get back about "what you did to him." That serves as your reminder to book your next quarterly trip, because he still has a along, long way to go.

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