Man asks if he was wrong to go behind wife's back to stop her 'being overworked.'

AITA? I talked to my wife’s boss about her being overworked. Now my wife is yelling at me about never trusting me again.

My wife has been putting in 10-14 hour days chained to her computer for the past 2-3 weeks through weekends as well. Wasn’t able to take any days off for the holidays either. She’s been screaming obscenities about her job, how she wants to quit, how it’s ridiculous she’s working so hard without any break. There have been multiple tear filled days.

I have been walking on egg shells doing everything I can to help around the house and get her anything she wants. But I am on edge constantly watching for an explosion.

Today (working through the weekend again) she was screaming about other people she worked with screwing her up and I just couldn’t take it anymore. I pinged her boss and said 1) there are limits for human beings, 2) this kind of thing can’t happen again next year. He agreed and said he’d try to help.

Either way, he did a crap job of keeping me out of his conversation with her about limits today. So she found out I’d messaged him ASAP.

Now she’s telling me it was extremely misogynistic to message her boss to say she can’t handle her job (which I didn’t say) and it’s going to set her career back years. Says she can’t ever trust me anymore to talk about work or how she’s feeling. Generally threw me in the doghouse.

AITA here? I honestly don’t know. I can’t stand to see her that strung out by work, but did I cross the line too far?

Info from OP:

I know her boss. Work at the same company. We’ve talked before about the crazy workload in their area. They’d both acknowledged it was over the top in those conversations. But nothing has been done in a year to make it better.

I probably would have done it for my guy friends. Seeing people I love this overworked really gets me upset.

When I see people getting crapped on in my area at work, I go out of my way to try to stop it. I step up for other people and try to give them opportunities to succeed, not get buried or flame out entirely. I’m an outspoken person with little filter when it comes to work.

Here's how people judged OP:

bookagnostic writes:

YTA I don't know what field your wife works in, but women often have to fight a lot harder for promotions and raises than men do. You get to hear her stress, but I am sure she plays it off as being totally cool and collected to her coworkers. What you did is essentially tell her boss that she cannot handle the work load and it's not your place to do that even a little bit.

brookleinneinnein writes:

Let’s be honest; he might have single-handedly tanked her career at this office. And depending on her industry and how small/specialized it is he may have completely killed her career.

Stubbedtoe18 writes:

It's honestly incredible someone has the audacity to do this.Imagine listening to your partner vent, then going through the trouble of finding her boss's contact information, calling that boss (on a weekend evening?), and ratting them out completely. Imagine doing that in general for any reason.

What a bizarre way to tank your SO's career, all over you being tired of listening to your wife gripe, according to OP. Terrible.

MarvellousIntrigue writes:

It literally changes the dynamics of your relationship from partners to parent/child! Thanks dad for telling the bully to leave me alone! SMH

MySuperLove writes:

YTA. 'Either way, he did a crap job of keeping me out of his conversation with her about limits today.' Why would he misrepresent what happened? He's not your friend. It's pretty dumb that you'd think you could meddle and somehow catch no blame.

Suggested Reading for OP:

'Why can’t you contact your spouse’s employer to advocate for them?'

Response from OP:

I crossed the line out of desperation. Completely naive. The dumbest thing I’ve done in 10+ years of marriage.

It was juvenilely naive and misguided in both cases to think I would really be helping with no consequences for my friend or my wife.

I don’t believe I’m consciously misogynist, just a naive idiot who just crossed a boundary into misogynistic territory and I will need to do quite a lot to walk that back.

I’m going to do whatever it takes to fix it. Apologize profusely, talk to her about it as much as she is willing to, give her space, take care of whatever I can to ease the new stress I put on her, take any steps she would like me to take to remediate the situation with her boss, and any steps she needs me to take to earn back her trust over time.

There is no simple fix for this breach of trust.