I Go To Work Every Day And My Wife Resents Me For It Right Now
I’m sitting in my car in the driveway right now, typing this on my phone, because I just got off work and I’m avoiding walking in for five more minutes. Not because I don’t want to see her or our 10-month-old teething monster – because I know the second I open the door, she’s going to hand me the squirming, fussy baby and mumble something about needing five minutes alone, and I don’t blame her. But I also feel that little twinge of guilty selfishness, because I already had eight hours alone today. I already got to drink a whole hot cup of coffee, stop for a stupid gas station slushie on my lunch break, and talk about last weekend’s football game with a coworker by the copy machine without anyone screaming in my ear.
When I first went back to work after my two weeks of paternity leave, I was so dumb. I thought we had this figured out. I’d bring home a paycheck, she’d stay home with the baby, we’d split the chores after 5pm and on weekends, no big deal. The first big fight was three days in. I walked in, was tired from back-to-back meetings, and said, “He napped for three hours today, right? What did you do with all that time?” I wanted to take it back before I even finished the sentence. She was standing by the sink wearing a sweatshirt with two distinct spit-up stains, her hair hadn’t been washed in two days, and the sink was stacked high with dirty bottles that she never got around to unloading. She just stared at me, and then started crying, and said, “You get to leave this house. You get to be a person who isn’t just ‘mom’ for eight whole hours. What do you think I do?”
I used to default to that stupid defensive line – but I’m paying all the bills! I’m working so we can have this house! – until I realized that doesn’t fix anything. She doesn’t disagree that we need the money. She just resents that my job gives me a break, and hers doesn’t. Last week I was scrolling through my phone on a meeting break and saw her Instagram story: a blurry selfie of her passed out on the couch with the baby on her chest, caption that said “haven’t peed since 9am it’s now 1pm send help.” I went and peed whenever I wanted that day. I got a bag of chips from the vending machine, I joked around with the intern about the office Wi-Fi being garbage. All stuff that sounds stupid and small, but it’s all the stuff she doesn’t get to do right now. Her phone dies by 3pm every day because she’s carrying the baby around nonstop and forgets to plug it in. I found a half-eaten granola bar of hers behind the couch last weekend that had been there three days – she just forgot it existed.
I feel weird saying it out loud, but sometimes I’m tired too. Sometimes after a long day of back-to-back calls I just want to sit on the couch and watch a stupid show and not hold a crying baby for an hour. But then I remember she’s been doing that all day, so my tired doesn’t count. Or it does, but it’s not more important than hers. That’s the contradiction I walk around with every day: I know I’m lucky to have a steady job that I actually like. I know a lot of people can’t work, or can’t stay home, or have it way worse than we do. But that doesn’t fix the tension in our house right now. It doesn’t make her not mad.
Two weeks ago, my team wrapped a big project I’d been working on for six months, and they invited everyone out for happy hour after work. I texted her, half hoping she’d say go have fun, because I just wanted an hour of sitting at a bar talking to adults without someone yanking my hair or screaming because their tooth hurts. She texted back “Sure, do whatever you want.” I could feel the eye roll and the anger through the screen. I stayed for one beer, then bailed, stopped at the grocery store for her favorite chocolate chip cookies and that cheap rosé she likes, and drove home. When I walked in, the baby was banging on the bathroom door, and she was locked inside, just sitting on the floor crying. She’d had a blowout to clean up at 2pm, the washing machine had clogged with a bunch of baby socks, and she hadn’t had two minutes to breathe all day. That’s when I actually got it, more than any friend or parenting article ever told me. It’s not that she hates working. It’s that she’s the only one on duty all day. There’s no one to tag out when she’s tired. There’s no lunch break.
I’m still messing up all the time. Last night I forgot to order groceries for the week, and we ran out of milk for the baby’s morning bottle, and she had to load the crying kid into the car at 8pm just to go to the gas station. She didn’t talk to me until I left for work this morning. I get it. I don’t blame her. I’ve stopped trying to fix it with big grand gestures, like booking her a spa day once a month. Don’t get me wrong, she goes, but one day off a month doesn’t fix the 30 other days she’s on alone. Now I just try to do the small stupid stuff every day. I walk in the door, drop my bag, and take the baby before I even ask how her day was. I do the whole bedtime routine by myself every night – the pajamas, the bottle, the rocking, the wiping up the spit up off the carpet. I empty the dishwasher, I order the groceries, I don’t complain when she wants to sit on the porch and scroll her phone for an hour after dinner while I play with the baby.
People keep telling me it’ll get better, that once the baby sleeps through the night and starts walking it’ll get easier. Maybe it will. I don’t have a nice neat ending for this, some big lesson I learned that fixed everything. We’re still muddling through. Some days I do okay, some days I’m the same dumb guy who asks what she did all day. She’s still resentful most of the time, and I don’t blame her. I just hope she knows I’m not trying to ditch my share. I’m just trying to not mess this up more than I already have. That’s all I got right now.
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