Finding time to unwind after a grueling day at the office is incredibly important for your mental health. We all need a moment to just sit in silence or shoot some virtual zombies to wash away the stress of the daily grind. But when you are married with young children, that decompression time suddenly becomes a highly contested luxury. One dad on Reddit recently asked if he was wrong for wanting a solid hour of gaming after work, and the comment section had some very strong opinions about his daily routine.
The Original Poster is a thirty seven year old man who works as a service manager for a high volume dealership. His work schedule is undeniably exhausting. He leaves the house at six in the morning and does not walk back through the front door until six in the evening. Working twelve hour days five days a week is a massive grind. It makes total sense that he wants to completely check out the second he gets home.
But we have to look at what his thirty three year old wife is dealing with while he is gone. She is a stay at home mom to their eighteen month old daughter. Anyone who has ever chased a toddler around a house all day knows it is an Olympic level endurance sport. Oh, and he buried the absolute most important detail at the very bottom of his post. His exhausted wife is currently twenty weeks pregnant with their second child.
Here is exactly how the husband spends his evenings. He walks in the door, eats his dinner, and knocks out whatever household chores his wife has waiting for him. After checking those boxes, he expects to fire up his gaming console and play a couple rounds of Call of Duty for thirty to sixty minutes. He thinks this is a perfectly fair arrangement.
His pregnant wife completely disagrees. She actually told him it feels criminal that he demands decompression time at the end of the day. From her perspective, she has been on active duty since the moment she woke up. There is no clocking out when you are raising a toddler and growing a brand new human inside your body. When he retreats to his video games, she is just continuing her endless shift.
The husband tries to justify his gaming habit by claiming their daughter is currently going through a massive mommy phase. He insists the toddler prefers to spend time with her mother anyway, so his presence is not strictly required. This is a classic trap that so many parents fall into. Just because a child prefers one parent does not mean the preferred parent does not desperately need a break from being the default caregiver.
The real issue seems to be what happens after the gaming session ends. The husband claims he joins his family in the living room to hang out. But his version of hanging out involves sitting on the couch while his wife watches a movie and he rereads the same book to his daughter ten times. Whenever the toddler wanders back over to mom, he immediately pulls out his phone and starts scrolling through Twitter and Reddit.
He defends his phone usage by stating he has absolutely zero interest in whatever television show his wife happens to be watching. So instead of trying to engage with her or find a show they both enjoy, he just checks out digitally. His wife rightfully accuses him of being absent and not truly present with his family.
Sitting on the same couch as someone is not the same thing as spending quality time with them. If your face is buried in your phone reading internet forums, you are not actually connecting with your pregnant spouse. You are just a warm body occupying a cushion. Add in the fact that he falls asleep by nine thirty while she and the toddler stay up for another hour or two, and you have a recipe for some serious marital resentment.
The internet had some very mixed reactions to this dilemma. A lot of people defended the guy for wanting thirty minutes to himself after a brutal twelve hour shift. You cannot pour from an empty cup, and working that much takes a serious toll. But the vast majority of commenters pointed out that his pregnant wife is also running on empty. He needs to put the controller down, put the phone away, and actually talk to the woman who is building his second child. What would you do if your partner zoned out on their phone every night? Tell us in the comments below!