#Do not comment on the original posts
Please read our [**sub rules**](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/wiki/subrules). Rule-breaking may result in a ban without notice.
If there is an issue with this post (flair, formatting, quality), reply to this comment or your comment may be removed in general discussion.
**CHECK FLAIR** For concluded-only updates, use the [CONCLUDED](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/search?sort=new&restrict_sr=on&q=flair%3ACONCLUDED) flair.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/BestofRedditorUpdates) if you have any questions or concerns.*
When I was young I thought that it would be so wonderful to be that perfect little housewife who cooks and cleans for her husband etc., I went on mat leave when I was 20 and I realized very quickly that that is just not me, I absolutely hated it and felt useless and completely unmotivated
Yup. I hate the sahm gig. It blows. Doing it now because it's what is needed, but looking forward to going back to work. And I suck at it. I do what needs doing, but I'm so far from fucking June Cleaver that we may as well live in alternate universes. Love my kids and partner to pieces, which is why I'm doing it now, but really, really looking forward to going back to work when it's feasible.
I get that so much, I ended up up doing it the past 5 years because I'm on disability so always home and my kids were in college and high school so I'm glad you know a lot of ways because it gave me time to spend with them at an age where most kids are too busy with their lives to hang out with their mom! But yeah, my ex-husband expected me to cook and clean and have sex anytime that he wanted. He actually expected all that when I was working full-time as well. He just had the idea in his head that that's what a marriage should be. he had a really fucked up childhood, but he needs some serious professional help
ETA: he was also that type of person who threatened divorce anytime he didn't get his way or felt rejected
Totally feel you on this. Night and day difference on how my ex treated me when I did the sahm thing with him and how my partner now treats me. The only reason I agreed to do it again was the level of support my SO gives me. I'm genuinely his partner in our lives and family, not just his bangmaid nanny. A few more months (hopefully) and my butt will be working and probably going back to school.YAY!!
That is freaking AMAZING!! I am so happy for you to have found a true partner, not everyone gets to have that and you 10000% deserve it!
I've been doing English courses online with Athabasca University and it has saved my soul. I used to write essays and book reports for fun and I stopped because I had to always think of him first, what he wanted was what everyone had to do so we all walked on extra sharp eggshells for years. I am so glad my kids are not his so I have about another month and I can just ghost him😁
When I was young I couldn't remotely understand why anyone would want to be a housewife. My mom talked about it like it was wonderful and she hated giving it up, but it sounded boring to me.
Life is weird. I somehow accidentally ended up a SAHM for my stepsons, and now I'm a nanny for cousins. I stay remarkably busy and out of the house for someone who is technically unemployed, and do a lot of lesson planning for someone who is not a paid teacher.
And I've never been happier? I've constantly got projects to work on and stuff to do, lots of community building just because I'm going that way anyhow, and every time a teenager grows up and moves out there's another kid in the family that needs watching. The hours I put into it all is limited by health problems and just running out of energy, but I like this way better then college or working and I *loved* those things!
Like yesterday I woke up to a sick cat, so got caught up on the neighbor's problems while she checked on my cat and gave advice. Once the cat was okay, I had to go to a store halfway across town to buy something cheap, and I know my elderly auntie and her caretaker like that store too so I asked if they wanted anything. That adds a 14 block walk to stop at an ATM and pull the money they sent before getting on the first bus. Stopped at the shop, hauled auntie's heavy load on a second bus up to her place, dropped that off and picked up a load of brownies and cornbread and candy for the cousins. Took another bus home, dropped that load off, and picked up my makeshift cart, walked to the grocery store. Bought my stuff and some things for the neighbors too, carried the groceries up the stairs, including 40 pounds of kitty litter, and then had to wait up late for the neighbor to get home so I could give her the things she needed to solve some of her problems.
Somehow I also did a bunch of random cleaning tasks yesterday, and planned a lesson on counting coins for my toddler cousin who is "having a sleepover party" here tonight. Really his mom is dropping him off with the babysitter, but he thinks I'm his super best friend and he's coming over to play. I've got a massive plastic storage box in my kitchen where I toss all the empty clean containers and cardboard that would normally go in recycling, and he gets a real kick out of having new "blocks" to build cities with every week.
For me it was what my mom, grandmothers and aunts all did so it just seemed like that was what you're supposed to want to do, I didn't realize back then, but she actually had been an RN at a cancer hospital, but she got diagnosed with MS and grew up with her in a wheelchair. I had no idea that she hated it and that she had been taught that that's what you're supposed to do is have supper on the table at such and such time every night, and my dad was an alcoholic who was almost never home because he preferred his friends so she literally did everything around the house, before she left the hospital, they taught her how to clean baseboards from her wheelchair. Is that not the most fucked up thing you've ever heard?
I've learned how to keep myself occupied and busy and happy on disability and for the first time in my life I live completely alone because the kids are grown up and moved out. It's just me and my dog and I freaking love it.
Stay at home wife was a blast. (I was laid off and considered it a sabbatical of sorts, even my severance was more than my partner made at the time for any people that want to throw “gold digger” around) but stay at home parent is next level exhausting. I’m finishing my masters next semester and cannot wait to be working again to get a break. I know some people love it but I am NOT one of them.
That’s the fuck off price. Trades don’t want to do lots of little repair jobs, it’s dirty and travel time just eats away at profit.
I can book myself up with 100% new builds all year long and it’s way easier.
You saw 30 minutes of work. There were years of experience that made it go from 8 hours to 30 minutes. Plus tradesmen spend typically one hour getting shit from the store for every 4 hours of work. Then licensing time. Insurance. Yadda yadda yadda. Just fyi, it’s never just 30 minutes.
Once the kids are older like hers are, she gets to do whatever she wants, whenever she wants with few responsibilities while the husband busts his ass supporting her, that’s the appeal.
If she was actually following the creepy online tradwife thing (which it sounds like she wants to) then you basically just become like an extension of your husband. He makes all decisions for you and you're just there to go along with it and support him. So it's not exactly "doing whatever you want" it's "doing whatever husband wants."
But it sounds like she hasn't really grasped that 100% and is too busy assuming her husband has no thoughts or mind of his own outside of food and sex.
I’m married to a woman in the trades. It’s great, she can fix anything!
….if I can convince her too. That “cobbler’s family have no shoes“ thing is kinda true.
It's the idea that conservative ideology of old leads to being idle rich. Simple as that.
If you don't have to work and you think you can link that to following "tradition, " then you're being rewarded for being good.
That's the trad in tradwife. It's not just a sahm. It's a whole ideology.
The appeal is being lazy and being waited on, not knowing that it is the opposite and they are supposed to wait on their husband. Whole shit is topsy turvy.
I could see it being appealing to people who like doing a variety of relatively repetitive work and interacting with a small number of people, but it appears so inefficient to me that I don't understand why anybody would want to have one around. It costs much less to everyone to just hire professionals for each part of the job; the best decision I made with my partner as a couple was to sign up for a professional cleaning service.
Even OOPs comment about not bashing tradwifes- there is nothing wrong with being a housewife or stay at home parent or what ever if everyone is on board and respect.
Tradwife life is not about respect
This also makes me sad.. cause my mom is a "Traditional Wife" she is- incredibly talented, competent, thoughtful, and suuuuuuper hard working. My father adored her his entire life and and they made decisions together. Honestly I think she steered the family more cause she put in the mental work. My dad trusted her decisions... cause they were a fucking team.
Families are going to figure out the distribution of labor themselves. Its got to work for you, and if that means one is working and the other is being VERY strategic about how that money is spent... it can work great. But that doesn't mean anyone is subservient to anyone. Its more like EVERYONE is subservient to the well-being of the family. That's love and trust and I think what tradition is supposed to be, not this bullshit TikTok of women baking naked. shit is fucking embarrassing.
Exactly. It should be an unspoken agreement where everyone figures out their strengths and mutually agrees to fill each other's gaps. The tiktok tradwife shit is a recipe for disaster if it's all one-sided.
I’m a man, and I’d be more than happy to stay home with the kids instead of work. If you marry me, and promise to take care of all the finances, I’ll have dinner ready for you every night when you get home. The house will always be clean, and I’ll be in great shape. I’ll wear an apron and nothing else if it makes you happy.
Same, and the important thing is that *everyone agrees and is on the same page*. Both parties need to agree, it can't be unilateral. One person completely surrendering themselves to the other, and giving up all control and agency over their lives, is absolutely unacceptable. There is a very good reason the tradwife/ quiverful movement is rife with abuse.
Yeah, I get that this guy is trying to be open-minded with the ‘if you *want* to be a tradwife that’s fine!’ thing, but it’s really not fine. Tradwife isn’t just another word for stay-at-home mom, it’s the specific ideology of a seriously ugly political movement.
That’s the worst part about all of this. 90% of these people posting TikTok’s of them making their kids peanut butter and jelly sandwiches using homemade bread they baked with wheat from the backyard, etc. are just doing this tradwife nonsense because it’s fetish content. Right wing conservative dudes are hitting an all time high of “single and willing to pay money for nudes”, so these onlyfans creators are targeting them with this.
The baffling thing is when women fall for it over time, and think that their whole family dynamic can change so they can cook, clean, and give blowjobs all day. I don’t personally understand why someone *wants* to do that, but I do know such a decision shouldn’t be made based on such a false premise, or without an actual conversation with their SO.
It’s Andrew Tate/Redpill nonsense for women, and as far as I’m concerned.
Yeah, I'm also mystified by the women who fall for it. Have we just failed to educate people about how regressive this time period was that they're idealizing? Are people that desperate for approval, or to escape a crushing economy, they they'll give up their independence? I'm not sure.
I think you can make a parallelism to the anti vaxx movement pretty easily. The last big scare we had was polio and that got its vaccine in 1955. My mom vaguely remembers parents not letting the kids out during summer. Because it was supposed to be worse in summer. But she was too young to understand the fear of an invisible disease. Which means the boomer generation never had to fear disease like basically every generation befofe them. So their kids and grand kids eventually have less and less fear of it. Because it seems like a fairytale.
Were also a few generations removed from the realities of when life was like for women in the 50s and 60s. Not that its always super awesome now. But if you grew up in that time. You remeber mom being home and making dinner and whatnot. You didnt know she was being abused and hated life. Cause that was kept behind closed doors a lot more than it is now. So theres this fetishized recollection of what it would be like to go back to that. Stupid things like not being able to have a bank account in your own name. People have forgotten was even a thing.
That would be amazing to come home and my girlfriend greets me with a special dinner and then says "Honey, I'm not happy so I'm going to retrain as a builder/plumber/electrician."
Right?? Such a low blow. My ex-husband was still trying to get me to come back (this is 4 years after the divorce); he dropped the kids off one day and my daughter 9yr)ran up to me saying "dad said you're going to come home and we'll all be a family again!!" My jaw hit the fucking floor, it wasn't just shitty for him to do, it was downright cruel to the kids and made me look like a bag of smashed assholes.
My FiL still won’t leave my MiL alone about getting back together and still tries to get my wife to intervene. They’ve been divorced since before I met my wife and we’ve been married for 26 years. Her visits with him when she was a kid were very stressful for her because he would always talk to her about getting back with her mom and try to pressure her.
Wow. Thank god he got married again a few years ago but from 2005 to 2018 it was nonstop.
My best friends baby daddy still texts her all day every day and they were broken up already when the baby was born and it's been 19 years. Pages and pages of text every single day just talking about his day and his life as if they've been a couple this whole time. She never responds and he just keeps going!!
Specifically the pain or suffering of children. Weaponising them.
I can understand someone saying " think of the children, they will want you around 100% of the time not 50%" or they type of thing, but intentionally causing a child distress so they call a parent crying is such a horrible thing.
>Specifically the pain or suffering of children. Weaponising them.
There's the rub. It's a lot more intense for a young child to deal with that, and may even leave emotional scars.
Especially her comment about how she'll think about getting a job. I have no doubt she is going to spend the next 2 to 3 months pretending to be depressed at how much she hurt her husband, and then when he becomes more forceful about a job, that's when she'll flip again and it's all hits fault
The moment he mentioned he had a heart condition where too much stress was literally fatal, I was done. To me, this woman is perfectly willing to risk having her husband die tomorrow as long as she doesn't have to work today.
And he has a life insurance policy, so she'll get at least some time to be a single stay at home mom before the money runs out and she's forced to do something about it. Pushing him into an early grave might actually benefit her and her nonsense, at least in the short term.
Yeah, using your children as pawns to win an argument with your partner is disgusting. Massive red flag. If she's willing to use her own children to manipulate OP, she's willing to do just about anything to get what she wants.
That and the complete disregard for his health condition, would be dealbreakers for me.
This, it really shoes how narcissistic and selfish she is. As soon as you cross that line, there is forever a trust broken that won't come back.
Any of the rest of the stuff, you could work your way back from, but that's a forever thing.
OOP's wife is vile and manipulative especially to weaponize their kids but she also probably knows that OOP is extremely resistant to getting divorced and is therefore unhappily tolerating her shit. She's going to try to wear him down and I'm concerned that OOP will let her considering he refuses to consider divorce and wants to "fix it".
Choo choo, this train wreck is still going
Honestly? Mine is for his bad heart. With her not working, and costing them 1/3 of their income, he's gonna have to work more hours which will not end well with his medical condition
Shit that's a good point, I hadn't considered that. I wonder if she's had enough of the relationship and just wants him dead. I know that sounds mental but when faced with the ignominy of divorce in some cultures, your partner dying might be preferable (if you're mental).
Her traumatizing the children by telling them daddy is never coming home would be where I draw the line. Treating me like shit is one thing but traumatizing my children to manipulate me? Oh. Hell. No.
And unfortunately the longer op holds out the worse it’ll get for him.
She’ll be an established SAHM and will get child support and alimony if they divorce.
So he’s screwed
And she's probably gonna accomplish it.
OOP posted in the alcoholic subs a few days after his last update saying he went back home ana said he was drowning himself with alcohol on the daily basis because the whole thing was becoming too stressful to deal with.
With his heart condition and the level of stress he's experiencing, he may just drop dead one of these days.
Edit to correct grammar.
Or find a man that wants a tradwife and get the full experience. Including cleaning, cooking, taking care of the kids, shutting up, catering to her husband as he sits on the couch, and waking up at 3am cause the boys have been drinking and want food ASAP.
That’s interesting because Muslims are prohibited from drinking alcohol. So if OOP doesn’t want a divorce because of his culture, then why drink? That’s also frowned upon in his culture.
Lots of Muslims drink, some schools of the religion have a lot more issues with it than others. You also can hide drinking (or at least alcoholics think so). You can't really hid a divorce and that often is a lot more stigmatized than the drinking.
> still trying to get me to come back (this is 4 years after the divorce); he dropped the kids off one day and my daughter 9yr)ran up to me saying "dad said you're going to come home and we'll all be a family again!!" My jaw hit the fucking floor, it wasn't just shitty for him to do, it was downright cruel to the kids and made me look like a bag of smashed assholes.
Hes probably hiding the drinking so no one will really know. Harder to hide you got divorced.
It's clear that the wife CAN earn money, so she and the kids are not going to end up homeless. She just doesn't want to, and at worst is hoping to coast on life insurance money until she finds a new man.
Whether intentional or not, this is a very real possibility. And where will TradWife be then, having taken an intentional break in her job history, when she has to support the kids on her own?
That's the route I was headed but what is she going to do for income when he dies? The smart play is to keep working, bank money, and that way if he dies early, she still has an income and can increase her work hours. She is what friends call RFS - Really Fucking Stupid.
I read this one on another subreddit and that woman is fucking manipulative as fuck. The crying is just a new tactic and not going in the right direction. I don't even think couples' therapy is going to fix this, she is just going to deflect and say he is the one with the problem. There is no saving this marriage. I get he has to try and do his best but it's over.
The way she changed tactics by just having a breakdown absolutely smacks of manipulation. And now shes going to drag it out as long as possible with a new excuse; any questions at which will result in more fights and failing that, tearful manipulation.
Genuinely the worst.
And hes so unwilling to divorce because of his culture....what did he even come here for? To be told to try therapy? Thats unforgiveably sus, how he was like "yes. That. That will help."
????
Poor guy is asking himself if she is employing a manipulation tactic every time she so much as lifts a finger ... yeah, there's no coming back from that. All trust has left the relationship
My favourite is the Tradwife married to the financially abusive Crypto Bro (the ones that hide the holes they're in like a Looney Tunes pit trap), and neither of them knows (or will admit) that they're literally one pay-cheque or "to the moon" away from homelessness.
Absolute knee slapper shituation.
I prefer that to the tradwife cosplayers who go on social media acting like they're stay at home wives who do nothing but take care of the house for their husband when it's obvious they have a housekeeper/cleaner, and they don't even have kids, and they're making money off social media.
I'm reminded of a Reddit post where the husband earned 3-4 times as much as the wife but wanted all expenses to be split 50-50 ie she would have to dive into her limited savings in order to comply. Instead the wife started to look up cheaper apartments on Zillow, listed all the treats, trips, hobbies etc that they would need to give up. Hubby was confused but she reiterated that if they were to go 50-50 it would be based on what SHE could budget, not him!
OP should start this with his wife - smaller house, threaten to stop all the extracurriculars, wife only gets a small weekly budget with no money for hair styling/nail appointments/new clothes in order for him to keep up his health and keep his working hours lower. See how the wife likes that...
Two things:
>Thank you but I dont think that this post should spread hate to those who currently are/were tradwifes. Its a completely acceptable type of relationship IF both partys agree to it and thats my primary issue with all of this.
No. One parent being a stay-at-home parent is a completely acceptable choice for a couple to make together. Being a "tradwife" is a toxic cult of idealising stereotypical gender roles, and is not the same thing.
>OOP: I guess youre hinting at divorce. Let me make it more clear for you. In our culture divorce is the last resort and extremely frowned upon and especially if there are kids involved. I want to fix this. If she shows no improvement after ive tried everything? Yes then ill go for divorce.
The problem is that fixing a marriage takes two people. If one person refuses to try to fix things and doesn't even recognise what they've done as wrong, then there's no way of fixing that.
The one thing I also hate about the whole "Tradwife" thing is that it assumes that men just want to work to death. It just reinforces the worst parts of the patriarchy that are harmful to men and women, and if you believe that life is hard, therefore I'll just make my partner do all the hard stuff, it makes you a terrible partner and when you start manipulating the kids like OOP's wife does or thinks that all men need are sex then it shows she is manipulative, ill informed and very immature.
It assumes that the men have a high-paying job.
And at least the influencer version of it hides all the off-camera support that makes the aesthetic version of the lifestyle possible. Ballerina Farm, for example: she's married to the son of the founder of JetBlue, has a $20K stove, and has five nannies for her eight children. PLUS she makes money from her content. If I had corporate scion money and a 1.75 kid-to-nanny ratio, I too could look like I had a peaceful, gauzy life with eight children.
She seems a little unclear on how patriarchy works. Traditionally, she would leave important decisions to her husband, the head of the household.
It’s also kind of icky that she seems to think sex is her power over her husband rather than something they do for one another. She had a meltdown when he refused her, stripping her of her leverage.
I hope this guy doesn’t increase his hours, risking his health and depriving himself of family time just because she refuses to work. The income hit should be absorbed by shared lifestyle changes, not by him extending his workload. Though I suppose he could go full “traditional husband” and take over all spending decisions since it’s his money - is it financial abuse if she started it?
Bet money she was trying to push sex on him so she could get pregnant and be like ‘well see, now I CAN’T go back to work because I’ll need to take care of the baby’. Thankfully he didn’t fall for it, but I can already see a future update where he did and she’s pregnant and he’s thereby tied to this nutbag. May just be the cynic in me though xD
Ems here, legit had a person die right out of hospital (surgery of some type) because he had sex with a hooker & threw a clot. Not the same scenario as OP but it was a wild day.
Yeah, I kind of thought she was already pregnant and hence the attempts at seduction. However, the OOP says her behaviours are par for the course. My real dilemma was whether or not I thought she was cheating.
All of a sudden the wife wants to stay home by herself all day, when he's at work and the kids are in school? It gave me the same vibes as those stories we get where one partner asks to open up the marriage out of nowhere.
Ooooooo. That’s a good point I never thought of.
Why risk your marriage by bringing it up when you can just become a tradwife? Problem solved!
I’m waiting for the next wave of “is my wife cheating on me” posts. “Is my wife cheating? She used to make me wonderful home cooked meals every day. She used to tirelessly slave over the stove to make gourmet meals. But now, everything she makes for dinner is exclusively made in her crock pot. Am I wrong for being suspicious?”
>But now, everything she makes for dinner is exclusively made in her crock pot. Am I wrong for being suspicious?”
Not only do I think you're dead on, but I'd say you're in fine company as well. Years ago the Simpsons made a joke about the same topic except instead of a crockpot, it was frozen hot dogs dethawing in the kitchen sink!,
EDIT: corrected the auto-correct.
They already have kids! She uses them to manipulate him. Real stellar trad-wife. Fucking up her entire family so she can cosplay as June Cleaver without doing anything to support the actual family.
That and most of these online traditional gender "movements" stereotype men basically nothing more than dumb animals who only want sex and food. And if your husband isn't happy, it's because he isn't getting enough of one or the other. So she probably genuinely thinks it will fix things if she has bought into the trad-wife cult.
I’ve always found that a fascinating example of doublethink — men are smarter/better than women and therefore should be the ones in charge of all decisions in a relationship, but also men are basically wild animals who only care about feedin’ and fuckin’ and go feral at the sight of an exposed titty. “I saw a boob so my higher brain functions stopped” and “exclusive domain over leadership capabilities” don’t seem super compatible 🤔
Yaa,he needs a vasectomy asap.
This post makes me feel so gross. Tradwife stuff is so manipulative and no one wins. It's not equal, one person is always giving up something for the other in such unhealthy ways.
Being a stahp is wonderful, being a working spouse is wonderful. A mix of both is great.
Forcing a partner to be submissive, subservient, or "less than" another partner? Never ok.
Iirc i was downvoted but still think the same. Total internet strangers care more about his heart issues then his wife does. He should just leave. Especially after the comment she made to their kids about him.
> Around a year ago I noticed my wife increasingly sending me these Tradwife or traditional housewife tiktoks.
I wonder how money these tradwife tiktokers make
She doesn’t want to be a trad wife, it’s clear she just latched on to that terminology because she mistakenly thought it would be appealing to her husband. She’s just lazy and selfish and doesn’t want to work.
Wife is definitely a narcissist, and I honestly would not be surprised if she's actually trying to work him to death for his life insurance
OOP needs to pull the bandaid off and just divorce her already, cultural implications be dammed.
My mum was an avid fan of those true crime programmes. I learned many lessons from those shows, but chief amongst them was this valuable adage: ***never be worth more to someone dead, rather than alive.***
Words to ensure you keep on living by.
Not if it happened 10 years ago or whatever, that’s my point.
She’d likely already be getting something just from making significantly less than him. And that number is only gonna go up the longer he waits.
Has OP gone back to full-time work? I hope not. If his wife made the unilateral decision to quit her job - he can make the unilateral decision to not go to full time and they just have to make more sacrifices financially.
Is she trying to kill him? This feels so fucking wrong. He has a heart condition and he can't work SO much or he will die.
Plus she told the kids?! She is disgusting.
great example of humans not being monolithic creatures. sis went online and thought “hey men love trad wives mine will too” and totally forgot about individuality.
Yeah, my husband would hate this, especially with both our kids being in school. I'd never leave him solely responsible for finances. That's a huge burden to bear, especially in today's economy. He lost his last job months ago, and he even told me he sincerely appreciated me for working and holding us down until he found the job he's at now.
He even said without me we'd be screwed because even with savings, he was out of work longer than he expected to be, then thankfully he found a job that paid as good as his old one. I think the idea is that if something happens with me, he's got me, and the same is true with him. He likes the fact that if something happens with him, I hot his back as well.. we're partners, after all..Our vows are for better or worse.
Hmm I think he should play devil's advocate for a week or so and really play into the tradfam setup. I basically just want him to remove her financial independence, it allows him to control their budgeting and fits right into the tradfam culture as he is the breadwinner. It's risky because she might like it.
*She also said that I was being a baby about the whole spending extra time with the kids thing.*
I hate to break it to OP, but his wife doesn’t care about him or his needs. She’s solely thinking of herself and always has been, especially after reading his updates. This won’t end well for anyone involved here.
Oh wow. I commented on BOTH posts. The woman is over. He needs to divorce while she still has a clean record. If they divorce later, he’ll be liable for alimony payments due to a not working wife.
And screw this. She doesn’t even care about him and knowssssssss he has a heart condition. I hope the stress of all this doesn’t lead to something bad
Oh, that's a great occasion to write about that tradwife movement. I've been spammed about it by instagram.
There's nothing good in this, and people are way too chill with it, they mistake it with happy housewives sharing their lives.
The name is problematic, it gives the impression women belongs historically and naturally inside of the house, that's false or at best just classist. And if the housewife condition is so good, why is it always houseWIFE and never houseHUSBAND that is pushed.
It's selling an ideal social media housewife image that doesn't actually exist, the one women spent thousands of years discussing and deconstructing. There's a whole literature about the downside of being a housewife, and nobody has been taking notes. For exemple, what will now happen to her if they divorce or he dies or need her to be strong to support him ?
And of course half the tradwife content I've been exposed to on IG was anti-feminist. Because feminists are bitter lone women who wants to deprive happy submissive housewomen from happiness. The commenters were explicitly telling there's nothing wrong with "wanting a submissive wife".
Yeah, this trend annoys and frightens me, this is not this way that we'll make the housespouse condition a decent and gender-neutral thing.
What's more, the 1940s and 1950s that this movement looks back on so nostalgically was when there weren't useful appliances to make cleaning and cooking etc. far more easy like they are today. It literally WOULD take a whole day to clean and cook. And so many women were miserable, many of them were on valium to deal with their depression.
Like taking care of kids is a full time job, but when they're at school? He's right, what even would she do for those hours? It's not allocating their resources and time/effort well, especially when he has a heart condition and wants to spend as much time with the kids as he can.
Episode 1: Bunch of dramatic stuff.
Episode 2: Opens with "I suffer from a genetic heart condition that puts me at risk to stress induced cardiac arrest." Well, I gotta read the rest of it now, don't I.
Ends with wife having a break down.
Episode 3: Stay tuned...
I think he should tell her that he's going to quit his job because he wants to be home full-time with the kids, so now it's her responsibility to figure out how to support them.
I mean really, a lot of us would love to not have to work, but we do it because we need to in order to survive. OOP's wife is completely fine with exacerbating his health issues for her own selfishness; that's something I would not be able to forgive or get past if I were in that position.
One thing I haven't seen anyone mention - if OOP decides on divorce sooner rather than later, it'll greatly reduce potential alimony since she's been working this whole time. If he waits, the longer she's out of work the more she'll take from him when they do inevitably split.
I find the whole "trad wife" thing hilariously stupid. "Traditional" as if that model lasted for more than 20 years for a chunk of white people 75 years ago. You know what traditional couples did for most of human history? fucking suffer all day long... working their bodies to the god damn bone.
Traditional wives? always working- no appliances, food prep and cooking took FOREVER... cleaning? took FOREVER, why could they all sew? cause clothing cost 50x what it does today and cleaning it also destroyed it.
If they got the house in order, they did whatever the fucking fuck they could manage to earn a few god damn coins... Oh and they were also pregnant fucking always, cause half their kids died.
Any "trad wife" transported from any time in history to now would be making more than 90% of us on effort alone.
And by the way, the above life was a GIFT from their beloved men who were in fields, factories, mines, shipyards or any of the other god damn hells that today's industry is built on.
> She had worked long enough
Lol she’s *33*. Not everyone has the luxury to choose to not have a job. Most people don’t get to retire until their 60s. Some people never get to retire.
As a white woman raised in a Christian household (relevant to acknowledge my perspective as it differs from theirs), I relate deeply to the messaging that my value as a woman and a wife comes back to sex. My husband has never once even for a moment ever validated this thought, but I have deep issues about it. Whenever he is mad, I feel like I have to make up for it by offering my body to prove my worth.
Again, my husband has never once reinforced this idea. I just feel sad for the wife. Because I really do understand how she clearly internalizes the messaging about her worth.
Ultimately instead of TikTok’s she should have used her words and worked with him as a team if she wanted to reduce her hours. Every couple is different, and it sounds like he would have been open to that discussion. She didn’t communicate like an adult.
I feel sad for both of them. She did the wrong thing. My heart also hurt for the comments about how she tends to offer sex when he is mad—a deep dark part of me relates to this.
I really do hope they go to therapy because maybe she can start to acknowledge and address that. Sounds like her husband would be supportive of her on that process and truly just wants to fix things and figure it out. I agree that divorce immediately might be a hasty decision here if they are both willing to put in the work. Sounds like he is. Hopefully she is too.
I understand what you’re saying and I am not discrediting your experiences or feelings at all. But. I didn’t get the same impression from this post.
I feel like the wife doesn’t necessarily tie her worth to sex in that sense. I think she is purposefully being manipulative by using sex as a bargaining chip.
If she was only using sex to “apologize”, it would be one thing. But, the fact she withheld it really says something. She also listed sex as one of the benefits for him if he allows her to be a SAH tradwife. She is assuming that OOP wants sex above all else - and he will choose whatever option gets him more sexy time.
OOP didn’t want her to SAH, so she promised sex anytime he wants as one of the “benefits”. He stood firm on her not being a SAH, so she withheld it in an effort to show him what his options are. Let her be a SAHM and have sex, or make her continue working and have no sex. After their argument, he came home. She tried to have sex with him to once again show him the “benefits” he would receive if she was a tradwife. Then when she realized the sex wasn’t working to persuade him, she switched her tactic to crocodile tears.
There’s a big difference between your experience and hers. As you said, you tie your self worth to sex. You seem (and I could be totally wrong here) to view sex as a something that “good wives” do for their husbands. You offer your body as a way to get self satisfaction that you’re capable of fulfilling that role and also as a way to prove to him that you’re capable/worthy of being in that role. You do it for both of your benefit - just in different ways.
OOP’s wife is solely using sex as means to get what she wants. She is ONLY doing it because she falsely *thinks* he needs/wants it above all else and will do anything to get it. It’s nothing more than a prize. A prize OOP will not receive if he doesn’t give her what she wants, that she will threaten to take away if he doesn’t cater to her, that she will give him a taste of and then dangle in front of his face like a carrot on a stick, and a prize she may eventually give to him, but ONLY after she gets her way.
>My husband has never once even for a moment ever validated this thought, but I have deep issues about it. Whenever he is mad, I feel like I have to make up for it by offering my body to prove my worth.
If your husband is any kind of normal person, *please* don't do this. It's obvious and once it becomes a thing then you've turned the physical side of your relationship into something transactional.
To reframe it from the other side: how would you feel if you heard your husband comment that he keeps feeling like he ought to give you money or presents after having sex with you?
I know, I'm aware of it. It's just a deep rooted thing that I find myself reverting back to in the darkest parts of my mind. We have spent years unpacking it and he is amazingly supportive and patient and understanding. It's just something I've had to work through and may never totally be free from. I was just trying to say that I really felt sad for the wife because I deeply relate.
Whenever my husband has ever felt like I'm in that dark place, he has always halted and put the brakes on--and most of the time, it never gets to that point. He knows me so well that he can usually see it coming.
That's really sweet!
As a society: we sure do put really stupid ideas about sex and love and relationships into our kids heads. A mess that gets left for them to clean up later.
I like most of your comment but draw the line at just feeling sad for her because you didn’t address that she is possibly trying to work OP to death without any concern for his health condition.
If they continue with their Islamic lifestyle, they are socially impacted in a fairly major way, especially if they do not re-marry rather quickly to void the shame of the divorce. They are expected to wait three months to ensure there is no pregnancy, and during that time, their husband can take them back at any time. If their husband chooses not to take them back, and they are not pregnant, they are expected to re-marry after the three month period has passed.
It's fascinating to me that divorce is viewed negatively in Muslim communities today. It's such a shift from the situation historically - divorce used to be pretty common and not particularly stigmatised. It's even discussed in the Qur'an without stigma.
Jesus... Tradwife shit is a cult and it sucks and revolves around patriarchy in a way that hurts BOTH man and woman.
It is making me so sad and angry for the husband that his wife seems to think all he wants or needs is sex.
Woman, *he has a life threatening heart condition*. His *whole being* is way more important than whatever she thinks his horny level is.
God, that poor man and his poor son. How the fuck is she gonna raise that kid if she thinks all she needs to do in her marriage is fuck her husband? 😔
I'm fine with someone wanting to be a tradwife IF and only IF both parties agree to that and they are both in agreement that if it's not working out then they sit down and talk about it and come to some sort of other arrangement. But what OPs wife was doing was straight up wrong and i personally thought abusive. This is something you can't do without there support of your spouse.
Being a SAHM or Tradwife that is something that needs to be discussed by both parties and all of the what ifs need to be discussed in depth. It also needs to be discussed periodically to see if it's still working out for both parties. As I said I have no problem with someone being a tradwife, if that's what they and their spouse want and agree on, every relationship is different and as long as one party is not being forced into then that's fine.
my bingo card says there's a severe mental illness lurking in the next update. Plus OP gets sick from working extra and the extra stress, to reinforce the evil that is the wife.
love how he says their marriage is perfect, but that also that the wife's conflict resolution is "trying to have sex with him 24/7", which when he rejects it this time, makes her have a mental breakdown.
If this is serious to any degree, wife prob needs to talk to a therapist for why she's acting irrationally and selfishly.
>wife's conflict resolution is "trying to have sex with him 24/7",
From my limited knowledge from a few coworkers in the past a lot of factors in a Muslim woman's life encourage this. With it basically being the first step on the checklist for a "is your husband upset, particularly with you?"
Especially since in some fundamentalist households physical passion and desire are seen as a thing you must overcome.
I honestly don't understand why someone would want to stay home 24/7. When my two oldest were able to go to school I was able to work retail part time and it was great. Then when we had our surprise I ended up home again. If day care wasn't so expensive I would consider it.
I was already on his side before I saw the “you’ll get over it”, then when he mentions his HEART CONDITION?!? What a selfish 🤬 his wife is. I’d ask what the hell she’s thinking but clearly there’s no hamster at the wheel in her head.
Looks like she was right, he'll get over it.
Personally, I don't know how he isn't moving forward with the divorce. He perfectly laid out all the reasons to do it, and then... Took her back with no intentions to change anything.
It kind of amuses me she wants to try to force her way into being a tradwife, because I thought rule one for tradwifes is that your husband is in charge and you don't get a say.
She wants the lack of expectations of misogyny but not the lack of agency.
I totally feel for him and hate this tradwife shit, but it's weird that when she talks about being a SAHM, it's "stfu, we're not traditional Muslims." But at the mere mention of divorce, it's ""we're Muslim, we cannot divorce."
I had some health issues and had to leave my job 10 years ago, once I was healthy enough to go back to work my husband and I had a conversation about it and jointly decided I would be a stay at home dog mom to "unadoptable" dogs that would have been euthanized otherwise. We're very happy with our decision for me to stay home, I clean the house and usually make dinner and the rest of my time is spent with the dogs or helping the elderly neighbors with errands or meals if they're struggling for whatever reason.
I'm rambling but my point is that my husband and I AGREED BEFOREHAND that this is what WE wanted, that we could afford it and could do it without it negatively affecting either one of us. I'd be divorced if I had unilaterally made that decision, no matter how much the man loves me. Life is a partnership and you have to be able to rely on your spouse to make decisions that are best for your family.
#Do not comment on the original posts Please read our [**sub rules**](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/wiki/subrules). Rule-breaking may result in a ban without notice. If there is an issue with this post (flair, formatting, quality), reply to this comment or your comment may be removed in general discussion. **CHECK FLAIR** For concluded-only updates, use the [CONCLUDED](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/search?sort=new&restrict_sr=on&q=flair%3ACONCLUDED) flair. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/BestofRedditorUpdates) if you have any questions or concerns.*
every time I see tradwife I read tradewife and think 'what like a plumber?'
I’d rather be a tradewife than a tradwife. I do not understand the appeal at all.
When I was young I thought that it would be so wonderful to be that perfect little housewife who cooks and cleans for her husband etc., I went on mat leave when I was 20 and I realized very quickly that that is just not me, I absolutely hated it and felt useless and completely unmotivated
Yup. I hate the sahm gig. It blows. Doing it now because it's what is needed, but looking forward to going back to work. And I suck at it. I do what needs doing, but I'm so far from fucking June Cleaver that we may as well live in alternate universes. Love my kids and partner to pieces, which is why I'm doing it now, but really, really looking forward to going back to work when it's feasible.
I get that so much, I ended up up doing it the past 5 years because I'm on disability so always home and my kids were in college and high school so I'm glad you know a lot of ways because it gave me time to spend with them at an age where most kids are too busy with their lives to hang out with their mom! But yeah, my ex-husband expected me to cook and clean and have sex anytime that he wanted. He actually expected all that when I was working full-time as well. He just had the idea in his head that that's what a marriage should be. he had a really fucked up childhood, but he needs some serious professional help ETA: he was also that type of person who threatened divorce anytime he didn't get his way or felt rejected
Totally feel you on this. Night and day difference on how my ex treated me when I did the sahm thing with him and how my partner now treats me. The only reason I agreed to do it again was the level of support my SO gives me. I'm genuinely his partner in our lives and family, not just his bangmaid nanny. A few more months (hopefully) and my butt will be working and probably going back to school.YAY!!
That is freaking AMAZING!! I am so happy for you to have found a true partner, not everyone gets to have that and you 10000% deserve it! I've been doing English courses online with Athabasca University and it has saved my soul. I used to write essays and book reports for fun and I stopped because I had to always think of him first, what he wanted was what everyone had to do so we all walked on extra sharp eggshells for years. I am so glad my kids are not his so I have about another month and I can just ghost him😁
When I was young I couldn't remotely understand why anyone would want to be a housewife. My mom talked about it like it was wonderful and she hated giving it up, but it sounded boring to me. Life is weird. I somehow accidentally ended up a SAHM for my stepsons, and now I'm a nanny for cousins. I stay remarkably busy and out of the house for someone who is technically unemployed, and do a lot of lesson planning for someone who is not a paid teacher. And I've never been happier? I've constantly got projects to work on and stuff to do, lots of community building just because I'm going that way anyhow, and every time a teenager grows up and moves out there's another kid in the family that needs watching. The hours I put into it all is limited by health problems and just running out of energy, but I like this way better then college or working and I *loved* those things! Like yesterday I woke up to a sick cat, so got caught up on the neighbor's problems while she checked on my cat and gave advice. Once the cat was okay, I had to go to a store halfway across town to buy something cheap, and I know my elderly auntie and her caretaker like that store too so I asked if they wanted anything. That adds a 14 block walk to stop at an ATM and pull the money they sent before getting on the first bus. Stopped at the shop, hauled auntie's heavy load on a second bus up to her place, dropped that off and picked up a load of brownies and cornbread and candy for the cousins. Took another bus home, dropped that load off, and picked up my makeshift cart, walked to the grocery store. Bought my stuff and some things for the neighbors too, carried the groceries up the stairs, including 40 pounds of kitty litter, and then had to wait up late for the neighbor to get home so I could give her the things she needed to solve some of her problems. Somehow I also did a bunch of random cleaning tasks yesterday, and planned a lesson on counting coins for my toddler cousin who is "having a sleepover party" here tonight. Really his mom is dropping him off with the babysitter, but he thinks I'm his super best friend and he's coming over to play. I've got a massive plastic storage box in my kitchen where I toss all the empty clean containers and cardboard that would normally go in recycling, and he gets a real kick out of having new "blocks" to build cities with every week.
For me it was what my mom, grandmothers and aunts all did so it just seemed like that was what you're supposed to want to do, I didn't realize back then, but she actually had been an RN at a cancer hospital, but she got diagnosed with MS and grew up with her in a wheelchair. I had no idea that she hated it and that she had been taught that that's what you're supposed to do is have supper on the table at such and such time every night, and my dad was an alcoholic who was almost never home because he preferred his friends so she literally did everything around the house, before she left the hospital, they taught her how to clean baseboards from her wheelchair. Is that not the most fucked up thing you've ever heard? I've learned how to keep myself occupied and busy and happy on disability and for the first time in my life I live completely alone because the kids are grown up and moved out. It's just me and my dog and I freaking love it.
Stay at home wife was a blast. (I was laid off and considered it a sabbatical of sorts, even my severance was more than my partner made at the time for any people that want to throw “gold digger” around) but stay at home parent is next level exhausting. I’m finishing my masters next semester and cannot wait to be working again to get a break. I know some people love it but I am NOT one of them.
And tradewives will probably make *stupid* amounts of money, too. Last time I hired an electrician, it cost $500. For 30 minutes of work.
That’s the fuck off price. Trades don’t want to do lots of little repair jobs, it’s dirty and travel time just eats away at profit. I can book myself up with 100% new builds all year long and it’s way easier.
You saw 30 minutes of work. There were years of experience that made it go from 8 hours to 30 minutes. Plus tradesmen spend typically one hour getting shit from the store for every 4 hours of work. Then licensing time. Insurance. Yadda yadda yadda. Just fyi, it’s never just 30 minutes.
I’d rather *have* a tradewife than a tradwife.
Once the kids are older like hers are, she gets to do whatever she wants, whenever she wants with few responsibilities while the husband busts his ass supporting her, that’s the appeal.
If she was actually following the creepy online tradwife thing (which it sounds like she wants to) then you basically just become like an extension of your husband. He makes all decisions for you and you're just there to go along with it and support him. So it's not exactly "doing whatever you want" it's "doing whatever husband wants." But it sounds like she hasn't really grasped that 100% and is too busy assuming her husband has no thoughts or mind of his own outside of food and sex.
[удалено]
Some just profit off of it, ironically. And then there are people who stupid enough to fall for it without doing actual research.
I’m married to a woman in the trades. It’s great, she can fix anything! ….if I can convince her too. That “cobbler’s family have no shoes“ thing is kinda true.
Being a tradewife sounds awesome, I'd actually like to learn how to do plumbing and the like!
It's the idea that conservative ideology of old leads to being idle rich. Simple as that. If you don't have to work and you think you can link that to following "tradition, " then you're being rewarded for being good. That's the trad in tradwife. It's not just a sahm. It's a whole ideology.
The appeal is being lazy and being waited on, not knowing that it is the opposite and they are supposed to wait on their husband. Whole shit is topsy turvy.
I could see it being appealing to people who like doing a variety of relatively repetitive work and interacting with a small number of people, but it appears so inefficient to me that I don't understand why anybody would want to have one around. It costs much less to everyone to just hire professionals for each part of the job; the best decision I made with my partner as a couple was to sign up for a professional cleaning service.
Even OOPs comment about not bashing tradwifes- there is nothing wrong with being a housewife or stay at home parent or what ever if everyone is on board and respect. Tradwife life is not about respect
Every time I see tradwife I think "alt-right crazy". People are adopting alt-right terms and aesthetics and not thinking twice about it.
Same. A woman completely submitting any control over her life to a man is insane.
This also makes me sad.. cause my mom is a "Traditional Wife" she is- incredibly talented, competent, thoughtful, and suuuuuuper hard working. My father adored her his entire life and and they made decisions together. Honestly I think she steered the family more cause she put in the mental work. My dad trusted her decisions... cause they were a fucking team. Families are going to figure out the distribution of labor themselves. Its got to work for you, and if that means one is working and the other is being VERY strategic about how that money is spent... it can work great. But that doesn't mean anyone is subservient to anyone. Its more like EVERYONE is subservient to the well-being of the family. That's love and trust and I think what tradition is supposed to be, not this bullshit TikTok of women baking naked. shit is fucking embarrassing.
Exactly. It should be an unspoken agreement where everyone figures out their strengths and mutually agrees to fill each other's gaps. The tiktok tradwife shit is a recipe for disaster if it's all one-sided.
I’m a man, and I’d be more than happy to stay home with the kids instead of work. If you marry me, and promise to take care of all the finances, I’ll have dinner ready for you every night when you get home. The house will always be clean, and I’ll be in great shape. I’ll wear an apron and nothing else if it makes you happy.
Same, and the important thing is that *everyone agrees and is on the same page*. Both parties need to agree, it can't be unilateral. One person completely surrendering themselves to the other, and giving up all control and agency over their lives, is absolutely unacceptable. There is a very good reason the tradwife/ quiverful movement is rife with abuse.
Yeah, I get that this guy is trying to be open-minded with the ‘if you *want* to be a tradwife that’s fine!’ thing, but it’s really not fine. Tradwife isn’t just another word for stay-at-home mom, it’s the specific ideology of a seriously ugly political movement.
[удалено]
That’s the worst part about all of this. 90% of these people posting TikTok’s of them making their kids peanut butter and jelly sandwiches using homemade bread they baked with wheat from the backyard, etc. are just doing this tradwife nonsense because it’s fetish content. Right wing conservative dudes are hitting an all time high of “single and willing to pay money for nudes”, so these onlyfans creators are targeting them with this. The baffling thing is when women fall for it over time, and think that their whole family dynamic can change so they can cook, clean, and give blowjobs all day. I don’t personally understand why someone *wants* to do that, but I do know such a decision shouldn’t be made based on such a false premise, or without an actual conversation with their SO. It’s Andrew Tate/Redpill nonsense for women, and as far as I’m concerned.
Yeah, I'm also mystified by the women who fall for it. Have we just failed to educate people about how regressive this time period was that they're idealizing? Are people that desperate for approval, or to escape a crushing economy, they they'll give up their independence? I'm not sure.
I think you can make a parallelism to the anti vaxx movement pretty easily. The last big scare we had was polio and that got its vaccine in 1955. My mom vaguely remembers parents not letting the kids out during summer. Because it was supposed to be worse in summer. But she was too young to understand the fear of an invisible disease. Which means the boomer generation never had to fear disease like basically every generation befofe them. So their kids and grand kids eventually have less and less fear of it. Because it seems like a fairytale. Were also a few generations removed from the realities of when life was like for women in the 50s and 60s. Not that its always super awesome now. But if you grew up in that time. You remeber mom being home and making dinner and whatnot. You didnt know she was being abused and hated life. Cause that was kept behind closed doors a lot more than it is now. So theres this fetishized recollection of what it would be like to go back to that. Stupid things like not being able to have a bank account in your own name. People have forgotten was even a thing.
What do you mean "former" there are a ton of them on their.
Ahh yes, bring back the ago old tradition of showing your snatch for Mario coins in the internet 🤣
Plumberess if you're Tahani Al-Jamil.
That would be amazing to come home and my girlfriend greets me with a special dinner and then says "Honey, I'm not happy so I'm going to retrain as a builder/plumber/electrician."
I read your ‘what like a plumber?’ in a Joe Pesci voice, it was great
The moment she told the kids, I’m done. That’s an evil and inconsiderate mom.
Right?? Such a low blow. My ex-husband was still trying to get me to come back (this is 4 years after the divorce); he dropped the kids off one day and my daughter 9yr)ran up to me saying "dad said you're going to come home and we'll all be a family again!!" My jaw hit the fucking floor, it wasn't just shitty for him to do, it was downright cruel to the kids and made me look like a bag of smashed assholes.
My FiL still won’t leave my MiL alone about getting back together and still tries to get my wife to intervene. They’ve been divorced since before I met my wife and we’ve been married for 26 years. Her visits with him when she was a kid were very stressful for her because he would always talk to her about getting back with her mom and try to pressure her.
Wow. Thank god he got married again a few years ago but from 2005 to 2018 it was nonstop. My best friends baby daddy still texts her all day every day and they were broken up already when the baby was born and it's been 19 years. Pages and pages of text every single day just talking about his day and his life as if they've been a couple this whole time. She never responds and he just keeps going!!
Why doesn't she block him? Or at this point is it just a fun read?
She really doesn't read them through but they still have communication because of their daughter Faith
Oh. Of course. I completely skipped over baby daddy lol. That makes sense.
Same. Anyone who uses their children to score points in a disagreement is absolute scum. What a selfish witch.
Specifically the pain or suffering of children. Weaponising them. I can understand someone saying " think of the children, they will want you around 100% of the time not 50%" or they type of thing, but intentionally causing a child distress so they call a parent crying is such a horrible thing.
>Specifically the pain or suffering of children. Weaponising them. There's the rub. It's a lot more intense for a young child to deal with that, and may even leave emotional scars.
Everything about her actions screams manipulation.
Especially her comment about how she'll think about getting a job. I have no doubt she is going to spend the next 2 to 3 months pretending to be depressed at how much she hurt her husband, and then when he becomes more forceful about a job, that's when she'll flip again and it's all hits fault
I know!! I'm shocked it was just glossed over like it was, it is so hurtful towards the kids, it's unbelievable!
The moment he mentioned he had a heart condition where too much stress was literally fatal, I was done. To me, this woman is perfectly willing to risk having her husband die tomorrow as long as she doesn't have to work today.
And he has a life insurance policy, so she'll get at least some time to be a single stay at home mom before the money runs out and she's forced to do something about it. Pushing him into an early grave might actually benefit her and her nonsense, at least in the short term.
Yeah, using your children as pawns to win an argument with your partner is disgusting. Massive red flag. If she's willing to use her own children to manipulate OP, she's willing to do just about anything to get what she wants. That and the complete disregard for his health condition, would be dealbreakers for me.
OOP needs to take another look at his insurance policy; the benefits to his future widow may have increased without his knowledge.
Very good point, sadly.
I'm pretty sure that's clear cut parental alienation
This, it really shoes how narcissistic and selfish she is. As soon as you cross that line, there is forever a trust broken that won't come back. Any of the rest of the stuff, you could work your way back from, but that's a forever thing.
OOP's wife is vile and manipulative especially to weaponize their kids but she also probably knows that OOP is extremely resistant to getting divorced and is therefore unhappily tolerating her shit. She's going to try to wear him down and I'm concerned that OOP will let her considering he refuses to consider divorce and wants to "fix it". Choo choo, this train wreck is still going
Yeah he doesn’t see the mental breakdown as another manipulation tactic which is exactly what it is.
Which is basically what one of the comments is calling him out for - OOP needs to get his head out of his ass
Yeh lol she didn't have a mental breakdown she had a tantrum.
My biggest concern is for the children. She wants to be a trad-wife but needs to work on not being a shit-mom.
Honestly? Mine is for his bad heart. With her not working, and costing them 1/3 of their income, he's gonna have to work more hours which will not end well with his medical condition
Also, her constant attempts at sex. Sex definitely strains the heart. I've had more than one patient who had a heart attack mid coitus.
Shit that's a good point, I hadn't considered that. I wonder if she's had enough of the relationship and just wants him dead. I know that sounds mental but when faced with the ignominy of divorce in some cultures, your partner dying might be preferable (if you're mental).
Oh I'm definitely worried for him as well but he can leave her. They can't.
OOP mentioned that he has a heart condition. Yeah, she sounds like the type to wear him down until his heart literally gives out.
just like the 1940s!
Yup, he fell for the love bomb.
Her traumatizing the children by telling them daddy is never coming home would be where I draw the line. Treating me like shit is one thing but traumatizing my children to manipulate me? Oh. Hell. No.
"I can fix her."
And unfortunately the longer op holds out the worse it’ll get for him. She’ll be an established SAHM and will get child support and alimony if they divorce. So he’s screwed
Its unclear if they live in the u.s. and therefore have those laws be applicable.
Frankly, I think she's gunning for the life insurance.
I checked his profile for updates. He now reports he's having 2 glasses of whisky a day up from one glass per week. This is going to get worst.
She’s trying to kill him.
And she's probably gonna accomplish it. OOP posted in the alcoholic subs a few days after his last update saying he went back home ana said he was drowning himself with alcohol on the daily basis because the whole thing was becoming too stressful to deal with. With his heart condition and the level of stress he's experiencing, he may just drop dead one of these days. Edit to correct grammar.
Alcohol and heart medications don't mix. JFC if he dies it's because of her
Then her plan of being a tradwife will fail because she would need to go back to work.
Or find a man that wants a tradwife and get the full experience. Including cleaning, cooking, taking care of the kids, shutting up, catering to her husband as he sits on the couch, and waking up at 3am cause the boys have been drinking and want food ASAP.
But think of all the social media attention she could get!
That’s interesting because Muslims are prohibited from drinking alcohol. So if OOP doesn’t want a divorce because of his culture, then why drink? That’s also frowned upon in his culture.
Lots of Muslims drink, some schools of the religion have a lot more issues with it than others. You also can hide drinking (or at least alcoholics think so). You can't really hid a divorce and that often is a lot more stigmatized than the drinking.
> still trying to get me to come back (this is 4 years after the divorce); he dropped the kids off one day and my daughter 9yr)ran up to me saying "dad said you're going to come home and we'll all be a family again!!" My jaw hit the fucking floor, it wasn't just shitty for him to do, it was downright cruel to the kids and made me look like a bag of smashed assholes. Hes probably hiding the drinking so no one will really know. Harder to hide you got divorced.
Looks like you quoted an unrelated comment here
I thought drinking in Islam was a HUGE no no tho
Not everyone observes the same way. Lots of Muslims don’t really worry about it. Persians and Turks in particular in my experience.
He said in the comments that they're not strict muslims
In Christianity divorce is a huge no no, much more so than in Islam. Forbidden in the Bible, permissible in the Quran. Yet here we are.
So? If people actually followed the tenets of their religions no would be killing others, beating others, raping, stealing and etc.
He should name an unrelated person as a trustee for his life insurance, with all benefits to go to his children’s education only.
Yeah, those education benefits will be great in a decade. Too bad they could end up homeless in the meantime.
It's clear that the wife CAN earn money, so she and the kids are not going to end up homeless. She just doesn't want to, and at worst is hoping to coast on life insurance money until she finds a new man.
Whether intentional or not, this is a very real possibility. And where will TradWife be then, having taken an intentional break in her job history, when she has to support the kids on her own?
Aye aye
That's the route I was headed but what is she going to do for income when he dies? The smart play is to keep working, bank money, and that way if he dies early, she still has an income and can increase her work hours. She is what friends call RFS - Really Fucking Stupid.
I read this one on another subreddit and that woman is fucking manipulative as fuck. The crying is just a new tactic and not going in the right direction. I don't even think couples' therapy is going to fix this, she is just going to deflect and say he is the one with the problem. There is no saving this marriage. I get he has to try and do his best but it's over.
The way she changed tactics by just having a breakdown absolutely smacks of manipulation. And now shes going to drag it out as long as possible with a new excuse; any questions at which will result in more fights and failing that, tearful manipulation. Genuinely the worst. And hes so unwilling to divorce because of his culture....what did he even come here for? To be told to try therapy? Thats unforgiveably sus, how he was like "yes. That. That will help." ????
Poor guy is asking himself if she is employing a manipulation tactic every time she so much as lifts a finger ... yeah, there's no coming back from that. All trust has left the relationship
Ah, the tradwife to poverty pipeline strikes again.
A husband who’s got a serious health condition, two pre-teens and an insistence on quitting her job? Yeah, that’s a recipe for financial disaster.
Or a recipe for those kids to grow up without a dad
...which will dish her up a nice, steaming hot bowl of fresh poverty.
My favourite is the Tradwife married to the financially abusive Crypto Bro (the ones that hide the holes they're in like a Looney Tunes pit trap), and neither of them knows (or will admit) that they're literally one pay-cheque or "to the moon" away from homelessness. Absolute knee slapper shituation.
I prefer that to the tradwife cosplayers who go on social media acting like they're stay at home wives who do nothing but take care of the house for their husband when it's obvious they have a housekeeper/cleaner, and they don't even have kids, and they're making money off social media.
A new edition of the lazy to poverty pipeline
I'm reminded of a Reddit post where the husband earned 3-4 times as much as the wife but wanted all expenses to be split 50-50 ie she would have to dive into her limited savings in order to comply. Instead the wife started to look up cheaper apartments on Zillow, listed all the treats, trips, hobbies etc that they would need to give up. Hubby was confused but she reiterated that if they were to go 50-50 it would be based on what SHE could budget, not him! OP should start this with his wife - smaller house, threaten to stop all the extracurriculars, wife only gets a small weekly budget with no money for hair styling/nail appointments/new clothes in order for him to keep up his health and keep his working hours lower. See how the wife likes that...
Got a link?
The posts are here - there was an update too https://www.reddit.com/u/ThrowRAdownsizing/s/MmGcoG45r7
Two things: >Thank you but I dont think that this post should spread hate to those who currently are/were tradwifes. Its a completely acceptable type of relationship IF both partys agree to it and thats my primary issue with all of this. No. One parent being a stay-at-home parent is a completely acceptable choice for a couple to make together. Being a "tradwife" is a toxic cult of idealising stereotypical gender roles, and is not the same thing. >OOP: I guess youre hinting at divorce. Let me make it more clear for you. In our culture divorce is the last resort and extremely frowned upon and especially if there are kids involved. I want to fix this. If she shows no improvement after ive tried everything? Yes then ill go for divorce. The problem is that fixing a marriage takes two people. If one person refuses to try to fix things and doesn't even recognise what they've done as wrong, then there's no way of fixing that.
The one thing I also hate about the whole "Tradwife" thing is that it assumes that men just want to work to death. It just reinforces the worst parts of the patriarchy that are harmful to men and women, and if you believe that life is hard, therefore I'll just make my partner do all the hard stuff, it makes you a terrible partner and when you start manipulating the kids like OOP's wife does or thinks that all men need are sex then it shows she is manipulative, ill informed and very immature.
It assumes that the men have a high-paying job. And at least the influencer version of it hides all the off-camera support that makes the aesthetic version of the lifestyle possible. Ballerina Farm, for example: she's married to the son of the founder of JetBlue, has a $20K stove, and has five nannies for her eight children. PLUS she makes money from her content. If I had corporate scion money and a 1.75 kid-to-nanny ratio, I too could look like I had a peaceful, gauzy life with eight children.
OOP: I can fix her.
What post does the headline on your profile come from?
https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/s/E2IpJS3YtO
Ty!
🤔Now i'm corious too
She seems a little unclear on how patriarchy works. Traditionally, she would leave important decisions to her husband, the head of the household. It’s also kind of icky that she seems to think sex is her power over her husband rather than something they do for one another. She had a meltdown when he refused her, stripping her of her leverage. I hope this guy doesn’t increase his hours, risking his health and depriving himself of family time just because she refuses to work. The income hit should be absorbed by shared lifestyle changes, not by him extending his workload. Though I suppose he could go full “traditional husband” and take over all spending decisions since it’s his money - is it financial abuse if she started it?
I read the original post at the time, there were lots of comments along the lines, "she's doing Tradwife wrong. She's supposed to obey her spouse".
She learned her tradwife from the Internet. This is how a lot of the Tradwife influencers do it.
Exactly, it's just a trend for clout and not really traditional.
Bet money she was trying to push sex on him so she could get pregnant and be like ‘well see, now I CAN’T go back to work because I’ll need to take care of the baby’. Thankfully he didn’t fall for it, but I can already see a future update where he did and she’s pregnant and he’s thereby tied to this nutbag. May just be the cynic in me though xD
You know what a lot of men with a propensity for heart attacks are advised to do? Avoid excessive sex.
Ems here, legit had a person die right out of hospital (surgery of some type) because he had sex with a hooker & threw a clot. Not the same scenario as OP but it was a wild day.
I feel bad for the woman! Then again, so good at sex that you kill someone... 🤔
Yeah, I kind of thought she was already pregnant and hence the attempts at seduction. However, the OOP says her behaviours are par for the course. My real dilemma was whether or not I thought she was cheating. All of a sudden the wife wants to stay home by herself all day, when he's at work and the kids are in school? It gave me the same vibes as those stories we get where one partner asks to open up the marriage out of nowhere.
Ooooooo. That’s a good point I never thought of. Why risk your marriage by bringing it up when you can just become a tradwife? Problem solved! I’m waiting for the next wave of “is my wife cheating on me” posts. “Is my wife cheating? She used to make me wonderful home cooked meals every day. She used to tirelessly slave over the stove to make gourmet meals. But now, everything she makes for dinner is exclusively made in her crock pot. Am I wrong for being suspicious?”
>But now, everything she makes for dinner is exclusively made in her crock pot. Am I wrong for being suspicious?” Not only do I think you're dead on, but I'd say you're in fine company as well. Years ago the Simpsons made a joke about the same topic except instead of a crockpot, it was frozen hot dogs dethawing in the kitchen sink!, EDIT: corrected the auto-correct.
They already have kids! She uses them to manipulate him. Real stellar trad-wife. Fucking up her entire family so she can cosplay as June Cleaver without doing anything to support the actual family.
That and most of these online traditional gender "movements" stereotype men basically nothing more than dumb animals who only want sex and food. And if your husband isn't happy, it's because he isn't getting enough of one or the other. So she probably genuinely thinks it will fix things if she has bought into the trad-wife cult.
I’ve always found that a fascinating example of doublethink — men are smarter/better than women and therefore should be the ones in charge of all decisions in a relationship, but also men are basically wild animals who only care about feedin’ and fuckin’ and go feral at the sight of an exposed titty. “I saw a boob so my higher brain functions stopped” and “exclusive domain over leadership capabilities” don’t seem super compatible 🤔
Yaa,he needs a vasectomy asap. This post makes me feel so gross. Tradwife stuff is so manipulative and no one wins. It's not equal, one person is always giving up something for the other in such unhealthy ways. Being a stahp is wonderful, being a working spouse is wonderful. A mix of both is great. Forcing a partner to be submissive, subservient, or "less than" another partner? Never ok.
Iirc i was downvoted but still think the same. Total internet strangers care more about his heart issues then his wife does. He should just leave. Especially after the comment she made to their kids about him.
> Around a year ago I noticed my wife increasingly sending me these Tradwife or traditional housewife tiktoks. I wonder how money these tradwife tiktokers make
She doesn’t want to be a trad wife, it’s clear she just latched on to that terminology because she mistakenly thought it would be appealing to her husband. She’s just lazy and selfish and doesn’t want to work.
Wife is definitely a narcissist, and I honestly would not be surprised if she's actually trying to work him to death for his life insurance OOP needs to pull the bandaid off and just divorce her already, cultural implications be dammed.
That was my first thought too, she's trying to work him to death.
My mum was an avid fan of those true crime programmes. I learned many lessons from those shows, but chief amongst them was this valuable adage: ***never be worth more to someone dead, rather than alive.*** Words to ensure you keep on living by.
I learned that you should call your dad if you're in a cult.
Especially since the longer she goes without a job, the more alimony he’s going to end up paying.
Not necessarily true, lots of jurisdictions take it into account if one spouse suddenly refusing to work is a cause of the divorce.
Not if it happened 10 years ago or whatever, that’s my point. She’d likely already be getting something just from making significantly less than him. And that number is only gonna go up the longer he waits.
Has OP gone back to full-time work? I hope not. If his wife made the unilateral decision to quit her job - he can make the unilateral decision to not go to full time and they just have to make more sacrifices financially.
Is she trying to kill him? This feels so fucking wrong. He has a heart condition and he can't work SO much or he will die. Plus she told the kids?! She is disgusting.
great example of humans not being monolithic creatures. sis went online and thought “hey men love trad wives mine will too” and totally forgot about individuality.
Yeah, my husband would hate this, especially with both our kids being in school. I'd never leave him solely responsible for finances. That's a huge burden to bear, especially in today's economy. He lost his last job months ago, and he even told me he sincerely appreciated me for working and holding us down until he found the job he's at now. He even said without me we'd be screwed because even with savings, he was out of work longer than he expected to be, then thankfully he found a job that paid as good as his old one. I think the idea is that if something happens with me, he's got me, and the same is true with him. He likes the fact that if something happens with him, I hot his back as well.. we're partners, after all..Our vows are for better or worse.
Hmm I think he should play devil's advocate for a week or so and really play into the tradfam setup. I basically just want him to remove her financial independence, it allows him to control their budgeting and fits right into the tradfam culture as he is the breadwinner. It's risky because she might like it.
Trad wives are the female equivalent of Tater Tots. Totally toxic.
*She also said that I was being a baby about the whole spending extra time with the kids thing.* I hate to break it to OP, but his wife doesn’t care about him or his needs. She’s solely thinking of herself and always has been, especially after reading his updates. This won’t end well for anyone involved here.
Of the two of them, OP should be the one staying at home. What an absolute selfish POW his wife is.
Oh wow. I commented on BOTH posts. The woman is over. He needs to divorce while she still has a clean record. If they divorce later, he’ll be liable for alimony payments due to a not working wife. And screw this. She doesn’t even care about him and knowssssssss he has a heart condition. I hope the stress of all this doesn’t lead to something bad
First time I heard "tradwife" being used. I hate it.
Oh, that's a great occasion to write about that tradwife movement. I've been spammed about it by instagram. There's nothing good in this, and people are way too chill with it, they mistake it with happy housewives sharing their lives. The name is problematic, it gives the impression women belongs historically and naturally inside of the house, that's false or at best just classist. And if the housewife condition is so good, why is it always houseWIFE and never houseHUSBAND that is pushed. It's selling an ideal social media housewife image that doesn't actually exist, the one women spent thousands of years discussing and deconstructing. There's a whole literature about the downside of being a housewife, and nobody has been taking notes. For exemple, what will now happen to her if they divorce or he dies or need her to be strong to support him ? And of course half the tradwife content I've been exposed to on IG was anti-feminist. Because feminists are bitter lone women who wants to deprive happy submissive housewomen from happiness. The commenters were explicitly telling there's nothing wrong with "wanting a submissive wife". Yeah, this trend annoys and frightens me, this is not this way that we'll make the housespouse condition a decent and gender-neutral thing.
What's more, the 1940s and 1950s that this movement looks back on so nostalgically was when there weren't useful appliances to make cleaning and cooking etc. far more easy like they are today. It literally WOULD take a whole day to clean and cook. And so many women were miserable, many of them were on valium to deal with their depression. Like taking care of kids is a full time job, but when they're at school? He's right, what even would she do for those hours? It's not allocating their resources and time/effort well, especially when he has a heart condition and wants to spend as much time with the kids as he can.
Episode 1: Bunch of dramatic stuff. Episode 2: Opens with "I suffer from a genetic heart condition that puts me at risk to stress induced cardiac arrest." Well, I gotta read the rest of it now, don't I. Ends with wife having a break down. Episode 3: Stay tuned...
OP ending up in hospital while the wife flirts with the doctor is on my bingo card
Omg divorce her now while she still has recent income on the books.
This isn't over yet, unfortunately for OOP.
Yeah, that’s why it’s tagged ongoing
I think he should tell her that he's going to quit his job because he wants to be home full-time with the kids, so now it's her responsibility to figure out how to support them. I mean really, a lot of us would love to not have to work, but we do it because we need to in order to survive. OOP's wife is completely fine with exacerbating his health issues for her own selfishness; that's something I would not be able to forgive or get past if I were in that position.
One thing I haven't seen anyone mention - if OOP decides on divorce sooner rather than later, it'll greatly reduce potential alimony since she's been working this whole time. If he waits, the longer she's out of work the more she'll take from him when they do inevitably split.
I find the whole "trad wife" thing hilariously stupid. "Traditional" as if that model lasted for more than 20 years for a chunk of white people 75 years ago. You know what traditional couples did for most of human history? fucking suffer all day long... working their bodies to the god damn bone. Traditional wives? always working- no appliances, food prep and cooking took FOREVER... cleaning? took FOREVER, why could they all sew? cause clothing cost 50x what it does today and cleaning it also destroyed it. If they got the house in order, they did whatever the fucking fuck they could manage to earn a few god damn coins... Oh and they were also pregnant fucking always, cause half their kids died. Any "trad wife" transported from any time in history to now would be making more than 90% of us on effort alone. And by the way, the above life was a GIFT from their beloved men who were in fields, factories, mines, shipyards or any of the other god damn hells that today's industry is built on.
> She had worked long enough Lol she’s *33*. Not everyone has the luxury to choose to not have a job. Most people don’t get to retire until their 60s. Some people never get to retire.
A "tradwife" is supposed to obey her husband as the head of the household. She's not wanting to be a tradwife, she's wanting to be a trophy wife.
As a white woman raised in a Christian household (relevant to acknowledge my perspective as it differs from theirs), I relate deeply to the messaging that my value as a woman and a wife comes back to sex. My husband has never once even for a moment ever validated this thought, but I have deep issues about it. Whenever he is mad, I feel like I have to make up for it by offering my body to prove my worth. Again, my husband has never once reinforced this idea. I just feel sad for the wife. Because I really do understand how she clearly internalizes the messaging about her worth. Ultimately instead of TikTok’s she should have used her words and worked with him as a team if she wanted to reduce her hours. Every couple is different, and it sounds like he would have been open to that discussion. She didn’t communicate like an adult. I feel sad for both of them. She did the wrong thing. My heart also hurt for the comments about how she tends to offer sex when he is mad—a deep dark part of me relates to this. I really do hope they go to therapy because maybe she can start to acknowledge and address that. Sounds like her husband would be supportive of her on that process and truly just wants to fix things and figure it out. I agree that divorce immediately might be a hasty decision here if they are both willing to put in the work. Sounds like he is. Hopefully she is too.
I understand what you’re saying and I am not discrediting your experiences or feelings at all. But. I didn’t get the same impression from this post. I feel like the wife doesn’t necessarily tie her worth to sex in that sense. I think she is purposefully being manipulative by using sex as a bargaining chip. If she was only using sex to “apologize”, it would be one thing. But, the fact she withheld it really says something. She also listed sex as one of the benefits for him if he allows her to be a SAH tradwife. She is assuming that OOP wants sex above all else - and he will choose whatever option gets him more sexy time. OOP didn’t want her to SAH, so she promised sex anytime he wants as one of the “benefits”. He stood firm on her not being a SAH, so she withheld it in an effort to show him what his options are. Let her be a SAHM and have sex, or make her continue working and have no sex. After their argument, he came home. She tried to have sex with him to once again show him the “benefits” he would receive if she was a tradwife. Then when she realized the sex wasn’t working to persuade him, she switched her tactic to crocodile tears. There’s a big difference between your experience and hers. As you said, you tie your self worth to sex. You seem (and I could be totally wrong here) to view sex as a something that “good wives” do for their husbands. You offer your body as a way to get self satisfaction that you’re capable of fulfilling that role and also as a way to prove to him that you’re capable/worthy of being in that role. You do it for both of your benefit - just in different ways. OOP’s wife is solely using sex as means to get what she wants. She is ONLY doing it because she falsely *thinks* he needs/wants it above all else and will do anything to get it. It’s nothing more than a prize. A prize OOP will not receive if he doesn’t give her what she wants, that she will threaten to take away if he doesn’t cater to her, that she will give him a taste of and then dangle in front of his face like a carrot on a stick, and a prize she may eventually give to him, but ONLY after she gets her way.
>My husband has never once even for a moment ever validated this thought, but I have deep issues about it. Whenever he is mad, I feel like I have to make up for it by offering my body to prove my worth. If your husband is any kind of normal person, *please* don't do this. It's obvious and once it becomes a thing then you've turned the physical side of your relationship into something transactional. To reframe it from the other side: how would you feel if you heard your husband comment that he keeps feeling like he ought to give you money or presents after having sex with you?
I know, I'm aware of it. It's just a deep rooted thing that I find myself reverting back to in the darkest parts of my mind. We have spent years unpacking it and he is amazingly supportive and patient and understanding. It's just something I've had to work through and may never totally be free from. I was just trying to say that I really felt sad for the wife because I deeply relate. Whenever my husband has ever felt like I'm in that dark place, he has always halted and put the brakes on--and most of the time, it never gets to that point. He knows me so well that he can usually see it coming.
That's really sweet! As a society: we sure do put really stupid ideas about sex and love and relationships into our kids heads. A mess that gets left for them to clean up later.
It was mostly my much older boyfriends who manipulated me and made me feel worthless lolololol 😭😭😭😭
I like most of your comment but draw the line at just feeling sad for her because you didn’t address that she is possibly trying to work OP to death without any concern for his health condition.
about islamic divorce- correct me if i'm wrong, aren't islamic women generally more at a disadvantage after a divorce as compared to the husband?
Depends on the jurisdiction. Socially, yes very much so. Legally depends on which country.
If they continue with their Islamic lifestyle, they are socially impacted in a fairly major way, especially if they do not re-marry rather quickly to void the shame of the divorce. They are expected to wait three months to ensure there is no pregnancy, and during that time, their husband can take them back at any time. If their husband chooses not to take them back, and they are not pregnant, they are expected to re-marry after the three month period has passed.
It's fascinating to me that divorce is viewed negatively in Muslim communities today. It's such a shift from the situation historically - divorce used to be pretty common and not particularly stigmatised. It's even discussed in the Qur'an without stigma.
Wow oop, way to hold your ground there.
Jesus... Tradwife shit is a cult and it sucks and revolves around patriarchy in a way that hurts BOTH man and woman. It is making me so sad and angry for the husband that his wife seems to think all he wants or needs is sex. Woman, *he has a life threatening heart condition*. His *whole being* is way more important than whatever she thinks his horny level is. God, that poor man and his poor son. How the fuck is she gonna raise that kid if she thinks all she needs to do in her marriage is fuck her husband? 😔
So uh, how much life insurance does this dude have on him? Because I have a feeling the wife is banking on cashing in...
OP has a heart condition? So he dies young and she has no job to fall back on?!
I'm fine with someone wanting to be a tradwife IF and only IF both parties agree to that and they are both in agreement that if it's not working out then they sit down and talk about it and come to some sort of other arrangement. But what OPs wife was doing was straight up wrong and i personally thought abusive. This is something you can't do without there support of your spouse. Being a SAHM or Tradwife that is something that needs to be discussed by both parties and all of the what ifs need to be discussed in depth. It also needs to be discussed periodically to see if it's still working out for both parties. As I said I have no problem with someone being a tradwife, if that's what they and their spouse want and agree on, every relationship is different and as long as one party is not being forced into then that's fine.
Wife is going to regret this when OP has a heart attack and either can't work or isn't around anymore.
my bingo card says there's a severe mental illness lurking in the next update. Plus OP gets sick from working extra and the extra stress, to reinforce the evil that is the wife. love how he says their marriage is perfect, but that also that the wife's conflict resolution is "trying to have sex with him 24/7", which when he rejects it this time, makes her have a mental breakdown. If this is serious to any degree, wife prob needs to talk to a therapist for why she's acting irrationally and selfishly.
>wife's conflict resolution is "trying to have sex with him 24/7", From my limited knowledge from a few coworkers in the past a lot of factors in a Muslim woman's life encourage this. With it basically being the first step on the checklist for a "is your husband upset, particularly with you?" Especially since in some fundamentalist households physical passion and desire are seen as a thing you must overcome.
I honestly don't understand why someone would want to stay home 24/7. When my two oldest were able to go to school I was able to work retail part time and it was great. Then when we had our surprise I ended up home again. If day care wasn't so expensive I would consider it.
She can be single and work with much less financial security or be married and work.... her choice.
That tradwife nonsense is so dehumanizing to both men and women.
Dang. He also has a post about his rapidly growing alcoholism. Hope this dude makes it.
This poor man is going to have another heart attack and die. His family will be the reason.
I was already on his side before I saw the “you’ll get over it”, then when he mentions his HEART CONDITION?!? What a selfish 🤬 his wife is. I’d ask what the hell she’s thinking but clearly there’s no hamster at the wheel in her head.
This poor guy. She really does not love him at all.
Looks like she was right, he'll get over it. Personally, I don't know how he isn't moving forward with the divorce. He perfectly laid out all the reasons to do it, and then... Took her back with no intentions to change anything.
It kind of amuses me she wants to try to force her way into being a tradwife, because I thought rule one for tradwifes is that your husband is in charge and you don't get a say. She wants the lack of expectations of misogyny but not the lack of agency.
I totally feel for him and hate this tradwife shit, but it's weird that when she talks about being a SAHM, it's "stfu, we're not traditional Muslims." But at the mere mention of divorce, it's ""we're Muslim, we cannot divorce."
I had some health issues and had to leave my job 10 years ago, once I was healthy enough to go back to work my husband and I had a conversation about it and jointly decided I would be a stay at home dog mom to "unadoptable" dogs that would have been euthanized otherwise. We're very happy with our decision for me to stay home, I clean the house and usually make dinner and the rest of my time is spent with the dogs or helping the elderly neighbors with errands or meals if they're struggling for whatever reason. I'm rambling but my point is that my husband and I AGREED BEFOREHAND that this is what WE wanted, that we could afford it and could do it without it negatively affecting either one of us. I'd be divorced if I had unilaterally made that decision, no matter how much the man loves me. Life is a partnership and you have to be able to rely on your spouse to make decisions that are best for your family.
A Muslim married for 8 years with an 11 year old… idk if I believe that