Right now, my wife is finishing up her last day of work at her current job. Her boss has been on again/off again toxic and she had enough. She’s got another job lined up right away on Monday.
The past two weeks since she put her notice in, it’s been nothing but a torrent of praise of all of her contributions. Every day she’s been emotional about someone telling her how much they value her and are going to miss her. Taking her out to lunches, numerous emails and texts of positive affirmation.
Her new job comes with a HUGE sacrifice on my end. Not only do I have to do school pickups for our four kids, I had to forgo my remote days (2x a week), so I can depart an hour or so earlier to be the one to pick them up every day. Now I also have the sole responsibility to bring them to appointments.
Now, here’s what falls on my plate:
- Morning school prep (Make Breakfast, Lunches)
- Pickups
- if children are sick, I have to be the one to work from home/PTO
- Dinner, given she will just be getting done at work
- Homework supervision
- Bedtime routines
- Cleaning
On top of this, she wants more things off of her plate, like playdate organization and activity planning.
I’m super hurt by this. And she thinks I’m not supportive of the job change for her. What she doesn’t realize is that my anxiety is through the roof of managing even more things while being the primary breadwinner.
It’s so unfair.
She gets complimented for everything she does. No one ever thanked me for my time at work, usually just a brief “see ya”.
She gets less and less on her plate, pretty much by brute force. “About time, husbands don’t realize how good they have it.”
She gets everything she wants. Time, space, possessions. She’s the gatekeeper of our intimacy and doesn’t desire me.
I’m always concerned for her, and compliment and reassure her of any insecurities. She will not even flinch if I have an anxiety attack.
I just want to scream.
I understand what you’re saying here. I know this may sound like a pity drag but as a female I get a lot of compliments which I have a love/hate relationship with as sometimes they can be pretty lewd and it gets exhausting after a while having so much attention all the time. I noticed people checking me out sometimes and clothes most people can wear look indecent on me. Things like shorts, yoga pants, tight jeans and even sweat pants. I remember this time the teacher made me stay after class and told me to stop wearing jeans and yoga pants to school as according to him it was "distracting"💀. The summer time is hard for me as things most other people can wear like both swimsuits and bikinis look “inappropriate” on me.
It used to make me uncomfortable the thought of so many people looking at me but I thought about it and now I don’t really care. 1) you can’t exactly blame them 😏 2) I’m not above this behaviour.