We all have things we are willing to overlook for the sake of our families, but this mom is realizing that her husband’s secrets might be too big to ignore.
While she was seven months pregnant, she caught him sending photos to a man he met on Craigslist; an act he claimed was totally fine because the man was a photographer.
Combined with his new habit of gaslighting her during every disagreement, she is starting to wonder where the incredible man she fell in love with went.
This woman is at the end of her rope with her husband, and let’s rewind to what she did yesterday to set the stage on that. As soon as she got up, she made breakfast for her husband and their two little girls, then packed lunches for everyone.
She got the girls all ready to go to school and daycare before dropping them off. She then ran over to her oldest daughter’s elementary school to attend an IEP meeting.
She raced home to work after the meeting (she’s fully remote), and in between that and taking calls with her clients, she washed and folded two whole loads of laundry and took sheets off the bed.
She picked up the house, scheduled doctor appointments for her daughters, did dishes, and put her husband’s dirty dishes from breakfast in.
“I went and did pickups, and then after pickups, there was an event at the library [that] the girls wanted to go to. I brought my laptop and worked from the library,” she explained.
“Around 5:30, he texted me to pick up detergent. I had already wrangled the kids into the car and buckled everyone in. I said I would go back to do it, but I wasn’t unloading everyone; we were on the way home.”
Sign up for Chip Chick’s newsletter and get stories like this delivered to your inbox.
“He said we were still in the parking lot. We were, but I had kids covered in paint already buckled in. I would come back. This was annoying to him.”
What’s so upsetting to her is that, in contrast to her daily tasks, her husband has it easy. He gets out of bed at 6:30, and she already has his breakfast and lunch ready for him.
He drives 30 minutes to the office and has an undemanding, effortless career. He actually leaves the office in the middle of the day to hit the gym.
He spends the rest of his time playing word games on his phone or sending her reels he watches. His drive home takes 30 minutes because there’s no rush hour traffic to get stuck in.
When he arrives back at the house, he spends an hour and a half relaxing, and that day, he did all of that before badgering her to run to the store to get the detergent. He easily could have done that himself!
“When I told him I was frustrated, he accused me of lying about being on the way home. Sure, I was in the parking lot, but the girls were buckled in, and the toddler was getting fussy,” she said.
“I was buckled in and about to leave. In my opinion, we were already on the way home. He refused to apologize [because] ‘I never do.’ This is one of his lines.”
“He said it in a disagreement a few months ago, so I sent him screenshots of 5-10 times I’ve apologized to him. He admitted it wasn’t true that I never apologize and that he shouldn’t have said it, yet here we are, with him using it again. He ended up making a comment asking what I even did all day.”
What’s funny to her is that her husband made a big show of cooking himself dinner last night and feeding their kids yogurt, to prove to her that he’s super helpful.
That night, she gave the girls baths, made the bed, folded more laundry, and had to give the girls real food for dinner because yogurt alone doesn’t cut it.
As punishment, she intends to stop cooking for her husband and folding or washing his clothing. She’s done, and adding to how hurt she is, once upon a time, her husband was quite a wonderful guy.
“My husband used to be so great. I remember one of the things I fell for was [that] in our first disagreement, he didn’t try to gaslight me,” she added.
“Over the years, though, that’s changed. He also might (rarely) apologize, but nothing changes. I’ve begged him to own something in our [lives]. He just says he’ll do whatever I want, but to tell him what I need.”
“He started taking testosterone shots 2.5 years ago, and sometimes I wonder if it’s that. He swears he hasn’t changed. He’s also had a lot of concussions. Tons. He can be so forgetful about things. Like he left his brand new laptop on his car and drove off. He’s done it with shoes, too.”
So, in addition to having to do all of their household chores, she has to constantly remind her husband of every little thing. But her husband won’t forget to take his shots, so she finds it suspicious that he is that forgetful about everything else.
In conclusion, she’s afraid her husband is nothing but an enormous hypocrite, and he loves to make her the bad guy and criticize her, yet not hold himself accountable in the same way.
Oh, and she caught him sending photos of himself without clothes on to a man he met on Craigslist while she was seven months pregnant, and here he is preaching about being a Christian.
By the way, she stayed with her husband after all of this because they had just bought a house to the tune of $950,000, and she didn’t think she could leave him.
His excuse for sending the photos was that the man he met online was a photographer, and her husband refused to acknowledge that he was cheating, which she accepted. In hindsight, she wishes that she hadn’t been so forgiving.
“He doesn’t believe in postpartum hormones or PMS and claims they’re an excuse women use to behave badly. I honestly can’t stand him, but we live in a state away from my family for his job. Now that we have a kid together, I can’t just leave. I’m stuck,” she continued.
“So that’s why I’m really considering gray rocking and going on strike. Is this completely immature?”
I think her husband deserves to have her stop helping him at home so much and making his life easier, since he clearly has no respect for her.
She’s done her best to try to get him to change and pitch in already, and I believe that going on strike is the next best strategy to deploy.
He’s not acting like a partner to her, so I’m wondering why she’s even staying in her marriage at this rate.
What do you think? Is the mental load of managing a husband like this just as exhausting as doing the chores yourself?
You can read the original post below.
By Bre Avery Zacharski
Hi, I'm Bre, Chip Chick's CEO! I have a degree in Textile/Surface Design from The Fashion Institute of Technology, and... More about Bre Avery Zacharski
