'AITA for falling out of love with my wife after she took a 7 week vacation?' UPDATED

"AITA for falling out of love with my wife after she took a 7 week vacation?"

I (32M) have been married to my wife (30F) for 4 years and we've been together for 8. She is a stay at home mom. We have Irish twins (1F, 2M) which was incredibly taxing for my wife.

She wanted a solo vacation break for a few weeks where she would travel different states, visit her high school and college friends, go to concerts, and do a lot of fun stuff.

She asked if I would be fine with it. asked if she could make it maybe a couple of weeks shorter, because 7 weeks managing our 2 children alone sounded really daunting, especially since work was also getting taxing recently. I do work remote so at least that worked in my favor.

My wife and I discussed for a couple of days, and I ultimately agreed with her that she did deserve a break because of what she has been through the past few years. And so she took her vacation. The first week managing our children alone was extremely difficult and I did feel like I was losing my mind, but I survived.

My sister came over to help me from the second week on, she was honestly a life saver, and I will be eternally grateful for her. I never directly asked her to help me, but I guess I indirectly did because when she video called me the end of the first week, I basically broke down in tears.

So from the second week on, my sister stayed over at my house to help with my children, and a huge burden had been lifted off my shoulders. I also was really able to focus on work, and meet my deadlines.

To be brutally honest, I did not miss my wife at all. I was emotionally and mentally relaxed, and also had a lot of fun with my children and my sister. I felt a sense of betrayal that my wife had actually gone through with the 7 week vacation. I slowly fell out of love with my wife.

When my wife came back from her vacation, she was super refreshed and recharged, but to be honest I was a bit indifferent. My wife tried to initiate se% the first night she came back, which I rejected because I said I wasn't feeling it.

The subsequent days, I had the same level of indifference in our day to day life, and she probably noticed it but didn't say anything.

A week later, she asked me why I was like this and I told her I don't love her anymore. She apologized for taking the 7 week vacation, and asked if there was anything she could do to fix it. I told her no. We pretty much went through the motions next couple of weeks, before I finally decided that I wanted a divorce.

She seemed devastated when I brought up divorce which surprised me because I already told her I don't love her anymore. She asked if we could do couples therapy or marriage counseling first before I started looking for a divorce lawyer, and I told her I needed some time to think about it.

I spent a few days thinking about and I am still leaning towards a divorce, because I basically don't love my wife anymore, and I don't think marriage counseling can fix it. AITA for falling out of love with my wife because she 7 week vacation?

Before we give you OP's update, let's take a look at some of the top responses:

gargan writes:

YTA. You needed to take care of 2 children for a little over a month and a half. You had your sister helping you for 6/7 of these weeks.

Your wife came home feeling better after the incredibly exhausting ordeal of giving birth twice in a 12 month period. She was probably extremely burned out, if not suffering from PPD at some point during those first two years.

It took you less than two months to be so traumatized by not having her to depend on that you decided you don't love her anymore? No counselling, no efforts to work on things, just make two babies with somebody and then abandon her for needing two months to get well again? Way to make a joke of your wedding vows. You should be disgusted with yourself.

feesta writes:

NTA.I think a lot of people in the comments are glossing over the fact that your wife is a SAHM and you work FT FROM HOME. So she got to leave and you got to be FT parent and working. If there had been daycare set up because you’d both had jobs, it wouldn’t have been that drastic of a shift.

As it is, her job by virtue of being a SAHM was to take care of the kids and household while you worked and I say that as a mom who was a SAHM for many years. Not only that but you were trying to work WHILE watching your kids.

I’m not sure how she thought that would work because if I had no income and wanted to vacation, I would make it as easy on my spouse as I could by finding some sort of childcare which is what you ended up doing. Not sure why you’re being vilified for that; if you don’t work, you don’t get paid, lose your job then everyone is homeless.

People post on here frequently about losing the love for the partner due to an extremely selfish action whether it’s cheating, refusing to help them during trauma/tragedy, etc. I can see how this would fall under that category.

I think if she had come to you with a solid plan for 7 weeks of childcare in her absence, you would have felt very differently about it all but as it was she just left without making any sort of game plan with you which is her job as one of the parents.

Does all this mean you should divorce? Only you can answer that. You’re the one who needs to decide if marriage counseling, time, her remorse or anything else will fix this for you.

feline4 writes:

ESH You ended up in tears after 1 week and are somehow surprised or bothered that she wanted weeks away when she’s with them 24/7. What had you done before all of this to help lessen the burden to prevent what was clearly burnout??

The fact that your kids are only 12 months apart means she got pregnant pretty damn quick after the birth of her first. So, she was caring for an infant and pregnant and doing everything else for the house?? Pregnancy is hard enough let alone trying to recover from a previous birth too.

You handled it and had fun because your sister took care of your kids and you got to go back to being a fun parent.

She shouldn’t have taken so long away, but 4 weeks makes plenty of sense given the mental and physical toll she has gone through in a short amount of time. You’re no prize and instead of owning your f'ups that led to this and thinking of working on your marriage, you’re choosing to say end it. How pathetic

violentiah writes:

I hate to say it, but if you didn’t miss your wife after the first week, because you had someone to help with the kids, that seems to be all you see your wife as, and you weren't really all that in love with her in the first place. Wife sucks for abandoning her family for nearly 2 months.

You suck for getting her pregnant twice in one year, seeing her only as a convenience, not just telling her that 7 weeks would make you reconsider the relationship (and what timeframe you would be 100% ok with) and not even trying counseling before giving up. I think wife is the primary AH here, but you’re not coming across great either. ESH.

Update from OP:

I woke up this morning, spent an hour reading the comments and decided that I at least owe it to our children to try couples therapy before considering divorce. I told my wife of my decision, and she was really happy about it.

But I also told her I don’t expect too much to come out of it, because I just didn’t love my wife anymore, and wasn't sure if couple counseling would fix that.

I want to clarify a couple of things. Money was not an issue, I am lucky to be working in a high paying, albeit stressful job. It really didn’t bother me how much money my wife spent on her trip.

The main issue was I was emotionally and mentally overwhelmed managing 2 children while I was also working full time (albeit remote). My wife was also specifically against daycare for personal reasons.

By the end of the first week, I had lost my sanity and basically broke down in tears when my sister video called me. She called me 2 times during the entirety of her vacation. My sister had enough time to come over and help me from the second week on, and she really wanted to because it gave her a purpose in life.

She has no plans to be in the workforce, and she is pretty much set in life because of my father’s money. I did ask my father to not leave any money behind for me and give everything to my sister, because I was already in the workforce, and had a good job.