Me (37m) and my wife (36f) have a 11 month old baby, our parents trade off watching the baby so we don't need to pay for childcare yet, we both work in corporate america in the same industry, I'm a senior director, she's essentially an entry level analyst with 15 years experience (due to switching jobs for lower titles, refusing promotions, or getting laid off during covid and taking a lower tital all over again).
Wife's made it clear that she wants me to be the primary earner of the family and "fund" the expensive things such as our future house we're looking to buy (minus her savings up til now in life, about maybe 30% of the down payment…not a tiny amount, but a one time use of those funds), and also saving for our kids college down the line, but also split all other household and child duties 50/50. She says she gets too stressed out with work and has no desire to move up in corporate amercia because of all the stress and that I "just handle it better". However, she expects everything else in life to be handled 50/50 (chores, cooking, shopping for kids) but ALSO, she wants me to manage ALL the finances, including her investments, 401k, handle everything with the car (maintainance, insurance, etc), and also spend 50% of the time caring for our baby (which I'm honestly fine with since I want a strong bond with them when their older).
Lately I've been super swamped at work, company is going thru an aquisition, I'm short members on my team, having to work until 10pm every night + weekends. My wife has been growing increasingly frustrated with "my need to work", instead of helping her with things such as shopping for clothes for our baby, looking up things on amazon to childproof the house, putting together a grocery list (despite me going to the store to get stuff on the way home from work). I try to explain to her that I'm BUSY. She wanted me to be the worker and make money, so I am, and I have hardly any free time because of it. I'm not just "working for fun". But she says having to manage all these purchases and things around the house is stressing her out, and then she'll randomly get mad at me and say I NEVER help out with the baby – which is not true, I literally have done almost all the nighttime feedings since the beginning, and I always put the baby to bed at night as part of the routine.
I just feel like my wife has an unrealistic expectation of what the delegation of duties should be, and whenever I point it out, she freaks out and says I'm not supportive of her. She's been in therapy for stress and anger management for the 7 years I've known her, and clearly it hasn't been helping. We even tried couples counselling before the baby was born to discuss all these things. I'm honestly doing all I can, I care for the baby after work as long as possible so she has free time to get her "tasks" done after work. Even on weekends sometimes, I'll let her sleep in til 10-11am and sometimes even nap in the afternoon and I'll gladly watch the baby during those times as I love bonding with them.
Is anyone in a similar predicament? Thoughts on this? Not sure how other couples handle this type of issue with delegation of duties and one partner who needs to work long hours and the other that intentionally has an "easier" job by design.