Maybe it comes down to decades of conditioning, but it seems there are still a lot of people out there who will take the stay-at-home parents in their lives for granted.
After all, it’s still hardly uncommon for working spouses to say their homemaking counterparts ” do nothing ” all day or that what they do doesn’t count as ” work .”
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And even if they don’t go that far, it’s easy for them to forget that even if they don’t like their jobs, they can still have days off from them every once in a while. That’s not really the case when it comes to parenting, as even vacations for parents can feel more like a business trip if the kids are coming too.
That all-encompassing nature of the job apparently didn’t cross one husband’s mind before he made one post that didn’t make him any friends.
To establish some context, the man we’re about to hear from said he works full time while his wife stays home with their two-year-old twins.
As he explained in a Reddit post , both parties agreed that his wife would be a stay-at-home mom as they didn’t have any family nearby and she wanted to enjoy seeing their kids grow up.
He also said that makes a good wage and doesn’t try to impose any spending limits on his wife. Although either partner would feel compelled to discuss a big purchase, he said that he ensures she always has access to money.
For these reasons, he is content with this arrangement and was under the impression that she is as well.
However, he recently learned that this wasn’t exactly the case as the wife told him that she felt burned out, unappreciated and taken for granted.
Although he initially forgot to mention this, he said that he regularly thanks her for what she does. That being the case, he asked her how he could help address these feelings.
In response, she said that it would be nice if he could show his appreciation in other ways from time to time, such as buying her favorite chocolate bar when he goes to the store.
He admitted this was something he hadn’t made a habit of doing, but was nonetheless taken aback when his wife said she felt he was treating her like a servant.
And when she said that her working hours are essentially 5am to 9pm seven days a week, he replied that while he understood she has a tough job, there’s no reason she could get presents for “getting on with her job” as he does.
In his words, “I never ask her to thank me for making money, I think that’s cringeworthy.”
There were a lot of responses telling him what was wrong with his line of reasoning, but the big one was that he was treating this woman more like a coworker than his wife.
As one user put it , “Appreciating her and showing her you love her is part of being a decent husband. If you’re a robot who doesn’t need appreciation, that doesn’t mean she has to be too.”
In the words of another, “She keeps that house spotless so when you come home you can relax and not lift a finger. When does she get a break? Does she ever get to sleep in? Does she get even an hour alone a day?”
Eventually, the husband updated his original post saying that he got the message about how unbalanced the work they do really is. He also acknowledged that the ways he thanks her may not be her love language.
h/t: Reddit | Particular-Willow-17
