Told my wife (F35) that she couldn’t do it without me (M34). Turns out she can.

I made one stupid selfish comment to my wife a week or so ago and now my life is in disarray.

My wife is in some crisis. Her work is closed and she’s being paid, but she’s home with our kids now, including one 3 year old. She gets breaks on Monday and Friday with childcare. We went into having kids knowing she wanted to be a working mother. So this has been an adjustment… to say the least.

Onto the OG fight. She spent a long day with our kids and the neighboring kids, and when I came upstairs from work and she asked for a break, I didn’t respond well. I made excuses and didn’t offer help and for the first time in years my wife lost her temper and cursed at me.

Like an idiot I dug in and thought I was right. I admit we both said some unkind things. But after reddit humbled me and she made me sit down and write a list of things I did for the family that day and compared it with her… longer list, I apologized. She accepted and I figured things would go back to normal.

They haven’t. My wife used to include me in parenting our kids. I did dance pick up most weeks and bedtime was split. I gave baths. Made dinner. All the stuff. Since our fight, my wife hasn’t asked me for any help with the kids. The first morning I woke up on what was supposed to be my morning with the kids, I figured she was just being nice or trying to prove a point but it keeps happening. She didn’t even send them down to say good night last night. Normally my wife does this silly game where she sends my son to ask me to read 5 books and then we would negotiate down to 1 or 2 and race upstairs. Last night I heard her racing him and came up to find her doing bedtime yet again. The kids haven’t even noticed. It’s like she’s replacing me.

When we were fighting I said something really really dumb that’s living inside me and festering. My wife was being nasty and said “you wouldn’t see the kids a quarter as much as you do if I didn’t arrange it and I’m done managing you.” I defended myself, I’m not an absent parent- and said something along the lines of “I’d like to see how long you can manage without me.”

Consider my foot officially in my mouth.

She’s started running again. She’s cooking really healthy and often. Every night I come home to my perfectly happy stepford wife, doing it all without me and I feel empty inside.

How do I fix this? I don’t even know where to begin… at this point I want to beg her to go back to how things were. This wasn’t what we agreed on.

Edit: Fuck guys I get it. I’m a piece of shit. I’m going to make this right.

Edit 2: thank you to the handful of people that reached out with advice. Believe it or not, I do want to be a good father and husband. I’ve royally fucked up and I see that and fully admit it. This is going to be my only edit and then I’m going to get off my phone for a while and focus my attention on my family. My wife had dinner cooked when I got home. Everything is fine between us so there wasn’t any tension. After we cleaned up I went upstairs and ran my wife a bath, put Taylor swift on her Alexa and lit a few candles. I told her to go relax upstairs for the night. She was surprised but smiled and went on her way. I’m currently on the toilet watching my kids take a bathe. People mentioned love bombing etc. but I’m just trying anything I can to show her I do appreciate and love her and our family and I want to be a present father. I’m going to do bedtime tonight and probably all next week. I’ll tell her she does so much during the day and deserves the break because it’s the truth. I get that I come off as an asshole. I grew up in a not great situation and didn’t have the best role models growing up. I’m terrified of my children not having enough and I overcompensate by working too much. This new job came with a big pay increase but the hours are longer and I feel like I can never keep up. I’ve reached out to a few recruiters tonight. I used to love my job and was always home by 4:30. Even if it means taking the lost income, I’m thinking about going back.

Relationships are hard. And humans aren’t perfect. For all the people telling me my kids don’t love me and I’m a waste of space, idk guys, just remember I’m an actual person. That shits rough. Anyways that’s all I have for you folks. I need to watch these kiddos and start planning out my long road of groveling and reconnecting. Thanks all!