Wife wants to hire housecleaner; husband spies on her to 'prove' her wrong. AITA?

When a frustrated husband kept fighting with his wife, he decided to take a different approach that has huge backfire potential.

So, he came to Reddit to ask if he had messed up.

'AITA (Am I the A-hole) for telling my wife the truth?'

whoopssssydaisy writes:

A little back story. My wife and I met at 21. We’ve been very happy together every since. We got married at 28 when she was pregnant with our daughter.

I work full time in a very high stress but lucrative field. My wife stays home to take care of our little girl and the household. We are both 33.

Lately we have been fighting a lot, mostly about her “workload”.

The quotation marks are doing a lot here.

I’ve tried to be understanding, I now leave work 30 minutes early every day to pick up our daughter from school.

A few weeks ago my wife really went off and kept ranting about hiring a cleaning lady so she wasn’t always so stressed. Red flags started going off in my head but I kept my concerns to myself.

Our house is only 2700 sq ft and it’s only the 3 humans and 2 dogs. Not exactly a huge load responsibility wise.

Only 2700 sq ft?!

I figured she’d cool off and calm down in a few days. Nope. She started demanding I let her know what wage I’d be willing to pay! She wants to put out ads! I told her I’d take care of it.

Instead I grabbed my assistant at work and sat him at my laptop for the week with the password to my home security. She’s averaging around two hours of activity a day.

7am : Wake up and get our daughter ready for the bus 8:15 : Back to bed, dogs left unwalked and unfed

11:10 - 2pm : Wake up again, let the dogs out back for nowhere near long enough, throw food in the bowls for them. Order breakfast and coffee, text message me about the ridiculous amount of dishes breakfast for her and my daughter created (a single bowl and a single spoon in reality). Lounge around and watch TV and scroll on her phone.

2-3:30 : Very minimalistic cleaning, mostly things that are glaringly obvious. Texts me while doing so vastly inflating the difficulty level and level of actual dirt.

3:30 - I pull in after picking up my daughter.

This was all of last week and most of the week before. I confronted her on Friday. Told her I wouldn’t be hiring anyone and that she really needs to pull it together, she’s contributing almost nothing and is complaining and lying about the little she does do.

That obviously didn’t go over well. She lost the plot and just continues to lie about her work load. Am I the a-hole here?

What do you think? Is she asking for too much, or is he going too far?

Here's what Reddit had to say...

Sokodal comments:

“I’ve tried to be understanding, so when my wife told me she was stressed, I lied to her and then used my work assistant to spy on my wife. AITA?”

ESH (Everyone sucks here), because I’m assuming what you’re saying is true (or at least partially so) about the workload stuff.

OP replies:

I did try to be understanding. I took on one of her responsibilities, picking up our daughter. I spent several days trying to figure out what exactly was overwhelming and when I couldn’t come up with a thing I did the admittedly shitty thing of having the kid watch the cameras. Her work load is pretty accurate. The kid included time stamps and whatnot. He took it pretty seriously.

nachtkaese says:

Once you resort to spying or surreptitiously monitoring your spouse, the relationship is over. We could spend a lot of time deliberating the finer points of assholery here (mostly OP but girl you gotta feed those dogs!) but it's more or less moot. The minute OP decided to task his admin with spying on and logging her activities, the relationship was doomed.

Underagreysky sees it differently:

NTA (Not the a-hole). However it sounds like your wife is struggling right now. Not having a lot energy, spending a lot of time in bed, having the easiest tasks seem overwhelming are all signs of depression.

Has she struggled with anything similar before? Is she seeing a therapist? Would you consider going to a couple's counsellor to hash this out?

From OP:

I’m honestly torn between she’s just being lazy and entitled and she may be legitimately mentally ill.

Maximum-Company2719 writes:

ESH (Everyone sucks here). Sounds like you might both benefit from a divorce. It will be costly, but sometimes the price of peace and freedom is high, but worth it.

OP responds:

We have an ironclad prenup and I’d sue for custody. Divorce might be a positive for me if we can’t fix things but it’d be terrible for her.

Wooster182 writes:

YTA (You're the a-hole) for how you talk about your wife, operate in bad faith, and waste your employee’s time by making him spy on your wife. Absolutely ridiculous and immoral behavior.

Instead of immediately dismissing and then spying on your wife, did you ever consider having some empathy and concern? If her responsibilities are really so minimal, why is she stressing out? Untreated PPD? Depression? Burnout? Give an actual damn about your wife.

Also, 2700 sq ft is almost 3 times the size of my house. I’d never get done keeping it clean for 3 people. And dogs only need fed once per day, so your manufactured outrage is silly.

Approach your wife with reason and care and maybe you can resolve this. It would be nice if you acted like you liked her. And if you don’t, then get divorced so you can both be happy.

Vixtoria01 adds:

'Only' 2700 sqft killed me. That's a lot to have to keep clean, kid or no. I think what other users say is more on the nose here. Wife is bored/depressed and they need counseling. OP maybe try having an actual conversation with your wife. I'm gonna say ESH (everyone sucks here) because communication is a 2 way street.

Looks like everyone is divided on this.

Who do you think the a-hole is?