'AITA for telling my wife she shouldn't be crying when we have honest conversations?'
"AITA for telling my wife that we should be able to have honest but tough conversations about our family without her crying?"
Exciting-Charity-160 writes:
For background: my wife and I have been together for six years and married for one year. We have a wonderful six-month-old son. My wife and I both work, with me being the main earner, making about 80% of our combined household income. I generally cover the larger expenses such as holidays, eating out, rent, and medical bills.
While my wife earns less, she also manages our home by ordering groceries online, paying utility bills, replacing old furniture, and handling purchases for our son such as baby formula, clothes, bottles, and diapers.
We live in Asia and have a full-time live-in domestic helper who handles most of the heavy lifting around the house and with the baby. Our helper cleans, cooks, does all the household chores, and takes care of the baby. My wife also shares in taking care of the baby in the evenings after work and on Sundays.
My wife recently went back to work after her maternity leave and really does not like it. She feels that there is too much on her plate since she has to juggle work, the home, and the baby.
She also feels that she does not have enough time to spend with the baby and therefore wants to be a stay-at-home mom. I can see that she is more tired and less happy than before. We have discussed this a few times, and I am fully supportive of her decision to resign from her job and be a stay-at-home mom.
However, whenever we have this conversation, I also bring up that while I support this decision for our family, we need to be aware that we will lose 20% of our household income and either adjust our spending habits accordingly or be okay with delaying our financial goals such as buying a home or planning for retirement. It is simply a trade-off between family happiness and income.
However, whenever I bring this up, she becomes emotional and cries, feeling that I do not actually support her decision since I keep mentioning the trade-off of her resigning and our income decreasing.
I explained that I just want to make sure we are aligned on the consequences of this decision and that we should be able to have these kinds of honest but difficult conversations about our family, ideally without her crying each time. For me, I would just like to have mature adult conversations about family and money without emotions taking over. She then became upset and left the room. AITA?
Here's what people had to say to OP:
Hopeful-Material4123 says:
How many times can you have the same conversation before it turns into browbeating her?? She does not feel supported because you aren't being supportive. You come off as patronizing even here...painting this as "my emotional wife needs to be reminded of the collateral consequences of how her actions effect this family.
Oh and please, enough with the crying, be mature" If this is how you talk to her, she no doubt also feels like you think she is stupid. Also, have some damn empathy for the woman who just gave birth to your child. You have no idea what a toll pregnancy takes on the body. if she is a little extra emotional, so be it. YTA.
myboyfriendsback777 says:
How many times have you ‘made her aware’ of the consequences? It’s been said, she knows now, you’re both in agreement. Move on.
NiennaLaVaughn says:
YTA. Crying doesn't mean a conversation must stop, and it isn't usually an intentional action. It can be emotional to recognize that reality doesn't match your dreams and to let go of wishes and hopes and to determine what reality needs to look like. Telling her not to feel emotions, especially so soon post-partum, is really invalidating and cruel.
impossibleoptimist says:
Crying isn't usually voluntary especially post partum. This sounds tough, I'm sorry.