Husband Says His Wife Spends Too Much Time Getting Ready When She Should Be Helping Him With Their Toddler Instead
He wants her to spend less time on herself and more on their daughter.
Dragon Images / Shutterstock Everybody has different ideas of what getting ready looks like. For some, it’s just a quick couple of minutes each day to put themselves together. For others, it’s a much more complex event. One woman proved she fit into the latter category, much to the frustration of her husband who felt she should spend more time helping their toddler prepare herself, and less time on her own appearance.
The woman takes hours to get ready, leaving her husband to handle their toddler.
Her husband posted on Reddit questioning if he was in the wrong after getting into several arguments about how long it takes his wife to get ready. He explained that this has repeatedly strained their relationship with family members and friends as they are often late to plans.
“It’s actually caused a few small arguments early on when I explained to her I think it’s rude to be late to plans, and that it was causing me anxiety to feel like we’re letting people down anytime we have plans,” he said. “This wasn’t five to ten minutes late, this was consistently showing up one to two hours after the start time.”
“Her stance was she needed the time to get ready, and we still get there eventually,” he explained. "She didn’t think it was rude. To me, it seemed that her hair, makeup, and picking out her clothes was much more important than spending time with the people we care about, and we were relaying that message to them by showing up so late.”
The husband said that he learned to live with this "wrinkle in [his wife's] personality." He loved her, and that was enough for him to overlook this frustrating part of who she was. However, that all changed when they had a baby.
“We had our first girl last year,” he said. “I think I thought maybe she wouldn’t feel the need to get ready quite so deeply once our daughter was here.”
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.
“We have stopped being quite so late, as otherwise we hit our daughter’s nap time and lose the time with everyone, so it’s put a need to be more on time,” he said. “But my wife still takes a while to get ready … and needs the ‘dedicated’ time to do so.”
Photo: Prostock-studio / Shutterstock
He wrote that it takes his wife 45 minutes to get ready just to go to the grocery store and two hours when company visits. This meant he was left alone to get their daughter ready.
“This leaves me to get myself, our daughter and all our daughter’s things ready alone in the time my wife is getting herself ready,” he said. “It’s been exhausting every time, and it’s honestly made me not want to go places or do things with family/friends because I’m worn out when we leave to do so.”
He just wants to feel like he and his wife are helping their daughter in equal measure. “I personally feel like there should be a more split effort to help get my daughter and her things together,” he stated. “Am I wrong for thinking maybe things should be a little more balanced?”
Reddit commenters had a variety of suggestions for the frustrated man.
One of the top recommendations from Redditors was for the husband to begin driving separately from his wife so that he could arrive on time to events with his daughter. “Leave her at home and she can come when she’s ready,” one user advised.
“If she takes a long time to get ready, why isn’t she starting her getting ready process earlier?” another person questioned.
"She needs to learn time management now, or it will have a big negative effect on your kids," a third user warned.
One thing was certain: No one felt that the man was in the wrong for feeling that his wife should spend less time getting ready and more time helping their daughter. And he's certainly not wrong for desiring a more equal partnership when it comes to the care of their daughter.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer for YourTango who covers entertainment, news and human interest topics.