'My (36m) wife (36f) is accusing me of trying to emotionally steal my son (12m) from her. Please help!' + 1 Year Update
"My (36m) wife (36f) is accusing me of trying to emotionally steal my son (12m) from her. Please help!"
I have been married to my wife for 15 years now. We married in our senior year of college. Upon graduation, she worked for 3 years to help pay for our finances while I was in law school. During my last year of law school, my wife got pregnant with our son, Zane.
After his birth and my graduation, I found work at a big firm out in NYC. I began making a good six figures, and my wife asked if she could become a stay-at-home mom, to help raise our son. I agreed with her and told her I would cover the house finances.
We’ve never had any issues with this. True, I would work long hours, but she understood. The house would always be clean and there was always food ready when I got home.
It was a great dynamic. The only issue was that I rarely saw my kid. Zane was usually asleep by the time I got home, because I would get home late. Zane and his mom are close because they spend a lot of time together.
Fast forward to 2020 and COVID hits. During COVID, firms, including the one I worked at, moved to remote work. I was happy, I could work from home and spend more time with my wife and kid.
Zane loved it, he would bring his legos and toys into my room and sit on the floor and play near me, we could talk and have a good time. At the beginning, my wife was happy about it. She liked seeing us together and she would join in the room too. Me doing my work and them hanging around.
However, if everything stayed great, I wouldn’t be writing this. It’s been 3 years since 2020 and my firm still allows remote work, so I still take advantage of it. Zane still comes in to play on his switch or iPad and even do his schoolwork in there while I work.
My wife doesn’t join us anymore, she just sits in the other room watching TV. So a few nights ago, I asked her if everything was ok and she got loud and mad, which she has never done before.
She began accusing me of stealing Zane from her. How it used to be the 2 of them laughing and having a fun time, but now all he wants to do is stay near my office or in my office.
I was shocked. I told my wife that he is my kid too and that with me here, we can all spend time together, unlike how we couldn’t before. She said I was trying to emotionally steal her son from her.
I reminded her that he was my son too, and I deserved to be around him as much as she did. My wife began crying and packed an overnight bag and decided to go stay with her sister. I was left dumbfounded at how south everything had gone in this conversation.
It’s been 3 days since she left and her texts have basically been dry and basically asking me to go back to working on-site in my firm. I don’t wanna have to do this as I’d much rather work from home closer to my family.
I’ve spoken with her sister, and she says that she sees no issue in what I am doing and said she will try to reason with my wife. I told one of my friends and he asked if it was possible that Zane wasn’t my kid and my wife was feeling guilt seeing us together.
I told him that wasn’t possible, not only because my wife has never shown any signs of being unfaithful even while dating, but we did a paternity test for safe measures (that was the lawyer part of me that wanted it).
We also have security cameras in and around the house due to 2 security incidents a few years ago. My wife never leaves without texting me and nothing is off at home.
We also share each others locations on iPhone, so I doubt there’s an affair being covered up. He also still spends a lot of time with her and likes to go with her when they go out. Zane is wondering where mom is and I am left really confused. Has anyone ever dealt with this before? Any thoughts on what I should do?
Here were the top rated comments from readers in response to the OP's initial post:
What does your wife do all day when Zane is in school? Does she have friends or hobbies? It truly sounds like she has some personal issues and she is using your son as a scapegoat to cover them up.
throwaway-37387282 (OP)
She does have friends that she visits or they come over. As far as hobbies go, she like cooking and pastry baking. She used to love having Zane sit in his chair by the kitchen counter and she would let him taste her new recipes and pastries.
While Zane is at school and I was working in office, she would do house stuff like cooking, cleaning, then watching TV or looking up culinary ideas if she is not going out with her friends. She still cooks and bakes, even with us at home, and in those moments, she is happy because Zane likes cooking with his mom, so he is with her when she does.
It sounds like her entire identity has become "mom." That is her purpose, and when she feels she isn't needed, she experiences a total identity crisis and lashes out at you, the one who is perceived as usurping her role and purpose.
It might be a semi-good thing that this is happening now because I could see her being completely devastated when he leaves home. Just to be clear, it is not good that she's had this meltdown, yelled at you, and packed a bag and left for no (logical) reason.
But if she is willing to work on this issue and reclaim her identity as something more than just Zane's mother, it's better for her to do that work now, rather than in 6 years and she's nonfunctional because he's gone away to college and she won't see him for 4+ months.
One year later, the OP returned with an update.
Good update. I went to speak with my wife the night I made this post. I went over to her sisters house to try and understand why she said what she said. Upon seeing me, she immediately began crying and asking me to forgive her, and that she was sorry that she said what she said.
Apparently, she had talked with her sister, and her sister tried explaining to her that our son was growing up and becoming more independent. The majority of the comments on the original post were right. She had been a SAHM for the past 12 years, but now that our son was exploring his independence, she didn’t know what to do and felt lost.
I asked her what caused the big blowup, and she said that our son had told her that he wanted to stop doing the weekly baking Saturdays with her, as he wanted to instead start watching college football with me.
His school is also asking them to explore their extracurriculars for next year, and my wife wanted him to do a cooking extracurricular that the school provides. He told her he didn't want to do that and wanted to start playing football. Important to note that in my office that I said my son spends a lot of time in, there is a lot of my football memorabilia.
I played in high school, as did my brother, and my father. Now I had a few trophies and a state championship ring that Zane liked to hold and look at (no I didn't play in college, I was a backup on the team).
Basically what did it for her was that Zane started to ignore all the old hobbies they did together and wanted to align himself with my interests. She felt the connection between them weakening.
She was in tears the entire time she was speaking. I listened to her and understood where she was coming from. It can’t be easy to have your identity be attached to one thing and then have that one thing change.
I asked her why she was gone for 3 days. She said that she didn’t mean to be gone for this long, but that when her sister mentioned she put all her identity into our son, she thought it would be a good idea to be away for a few days and give herself some separation.
I told her that he will always be her son, and that she will always hold a special place in her heart. That no matter how old he gets or how his interests change, he will always need his mom.
He’s just changing and part of our jobs as parents is to embrace that change and support him. She came home with me that night. She hugged Zane and cried telling him that she was sorry for leaving.
I took your advice and suggested family counseling, marriage counseling, or individual therapy. She said she would like to put off the first 2 for now, but did ask for help finding a therapist for her. So that should help.
I suggested her getting a job or something that she can do so that her entire identity isn’t being a mom. She said she doesn’t like her college degree, so I told her to back to school if she wants and I’ll foot the bill.
She is planning on doing culinary school and wants to open a YouTube cooking channel, and I told her I am behind her 100%. She also wanted to start working at her friends bakery, so she will be starting there next month.
I also suggested group family time so that the 3 of us do more family activities. I’m also asking Zane if he would want to do designated mom time and designated dad time.
He can do activities with his mom and I can do activities with him (he asked me to help him practice football, so I’m thrilled to do that with him). We also decided that mom and dad need to have their alone time, so he is going to get more free time to himself.
The past 2 nights have been great and I’m happy seeing my wife happy and back home with us. Thank you guys for all your support and comments. A few answers to things in the comments from last time:
Why does my wife have to text me when she is going somewhere? She doesn’t. We both text each other out of our free will. It is NYC and we have both been mugged before. This is a protective measure so we know where the other is in case anything happens.
Why did I ask for a paternity test if I knew she didn’t cheat? When she gave birth, I was working at a family law clinic my last year of law school. I had to be around couple who were finding out that their children weren’t actually theirs years later or having to hear how people didn’t actually love their SO.
It made me a bit paranoid, and my wife understood that which is why she was ok with me requesting one. Was it stupid, in hindsight yes. And I if current me was the me back then, he definitely wouldn’t have asked for one.
Here were the top rated comments from readers in response to the OP's post:
I'm glad OPs wife is getting personal counselling. The other two are also a good idea but she did not shut down all three and is going to perhaps the most important one. I am also glad she was able to admit out loud that the changing dynamic was what got to her and to accept responsibility for her own insecurities and make positive changes in her life going forward.
It's like watching Mr Bean being hunted by The Predator. I'm glad that her sister was also a 'blunt truth' to the wife in the story, instead of an enabler. It's so good when people have the kind of family that you can go to in the hard times, but while empathetic, they don't sugar coat it either.
"I was a backup player on my college football team," is probably the most truthful thing I will read on the internet today. I just woke up and it's already time to log off.
I've never really thought of how dependant SAHMs can be on their children needing them, it sounds obvious but yikes, that must hurt.
This is well beyond the internet's pay grade. It's clear that your wife is feeling alienated from her child (who, yes, is your child, too) and needs help to evaluate the reasons for that, to figure out what the underlying fears and needs are that are driving this situation.
You and she need to seek out couples counseling/therapy in order to work through this together. Additionally or alternatively, solo counseling or therapy for her might be a good option. But counseling and therapy only work if the person:
1) recognizes that there's a problem, 2) wants to address and correct the problem, 3) believes that therapy/counseling can and will help with the problem, and therefore 4) actually wants to participate in the therapy/counseling process.
If she cannot or will not go, then you should go, for your own sake, to talk over your feelings about this and learn some strategies for how to deal with the situation from someone who is trained to help with these kinds of things.