Creative individuals unquestionably improve the world. In truth, for a creative individual to acquire popularity, a lengthy and often laborious procedure is required, which not all individuals are willing to endure. How many times has an aspiring novelist or actor clashed with their spouse merely since they were not prepared to be the primary income in a household for an extended length of time? This story is about a wife who works for a technology business, and her spouse is a wannabe novelist working on his second novel. Read the whole story to know what clash took place between them and how you would deal with such a situation.
Source: Reddit
I work for a tech company. My husband is an aspiring author. He has had some success and we hope for more in the future.
When I got pregnant I negotiated a full year of maternity leave with my employer. I would not lose seniority or miss out on certain aspects of profit sharing. I’m sorry for being vague but I know many of our employees are in Reddit so I am going to fudge some information.
In return for the accommodation I made with my employer I got a month of completely uninterrupted time with my new baby. Then I started taking on tasks from home on my own schedule. On average it was 15 hours or so a week.
My husband writes at home so we decided that he would be the stay at home parent and when I was working he would care for our baby. It was a pretty good arrangement I thought.
And it was for about a month. Then he would start ignoring the baby crying, or claiming that the baby wanted me. That sort of thing. It started to interfere with my deal with my boss. I told him in no uncertain terms that if he kept interrupting me while I was working I would hire a nanny for help, but take the funds out of our fun budget. The budget that pays for dinners out, vacations, and hobbies. He got the point and I got my one to two hours of uninterrupted time every day.
Until recently. It is almost time for me to return to work full time. Once again my employer was very accommodating. They were impressed with my ability to contribute meaningfully to my group during my maternity leave. So they offered me a choice of WFH, work in the office, or a hybrid schedule. I discussed it with my husband and he said that I should choose WFH so I could help more with the baby. I chose to return to the office.
I have access to a private room and a freezer so I can store milk. I am able to interact with my team and I enjoy the environment.
My husband is saying that I’m being cruel and that my baby needs me. I said I would WFH if he got a job to pay for the nanny so it didn’t affect our budget. He said it didn’t make sense. I almost said ‘no sh*t Sherlock “.
He wants me to be the main breadwinner while he tries to get published, he wants to enjoy life in an expensive city, and he wants to stay home to write. Some of these desires are mutually exclusive without him stepping up and giving me time and space to earn a living.
We just saw his family for Thanksgiving and he was complaining to his mom about me choosing to leave him at home with the baby and returning to work. She started in on me for my choice. I was embarrassed until his dad spoke up and reminded her that when my husband was born she was a stay at home mom and housewife. He said that was what my husband signed up for if he didn’t want a job. It just became a big argument.
Now we are home and I feel bad and he says that he feels emasculated. So we are arguing. I feel like an a**h**e abandoning him and our baby. And his mom thinks I am.
EDIT
When I say he has had success I mean it. He wrote a novel that he self published. It was optioned for a movie. It was a lot of money to us at the time. But after the agent and lawyers took their share there was a lot less. And the movie never got made so there was no more money or publicity for his writing there.
Here are a few comments on the story where it was originally posted:
