When a husband takes on a new job that leaves his wife with solo parenting duties on the weekends, tensions rise fast.

Despite pitching multiple solutions, things blow up when he suggests she take vacation time from work if she needs a break.

Now, he’s wondering if he crossed a line.

AITA For telling my wife to take time off work if she wants time for herself

My wife (40F) and I (39M) have been married for 12 years and have 2 kids (9 & 7).

We both work full time, but I have got promoted about 3 months ago that required a change to my work hours.

I used to have the same standard M-F hours as my wife.

But my new role has me working 10-hour shifts Thursday-Sunday.

This promotion came with a pretty substantial pay raise as well.

My wife and I discussed how my change in hours would affect our family’s day-to-day lives, but we both agreed it would be worth it for the additional income.

More money, but clearly less family time.

I use my time off on Monday-Wednesday to do pretty much all the family shopping, errands, cleaning, laundry, and have even been able to make substantial progress on some long put-off home projects.

I also cook dinners and prep weekly lunches for the kids and my wife.

The additional income is becoming noticeable as well as we haven’t had this much in our savings account in years.

A few weeks ago, my wife started griping about my new job.

She hates that I am working all weekend because that means she’s with the kids the whole time.

Coulda called that from a mile away.

She complains that she goes from working all week to solo-parenting on weekends.

Both our kids are in activities on weekends so she has been doing that by herself as well.

We talked about ways to ease some of the weekend stuff from her such as getting a babysitter, carpooling to kids’ activities, taking the kids to their grandparents, etc.

But she still complains that all of the leg work for those things will be done by her because I’m at work.

She said she feels like she never has any time for herself since my hours got changed.

No kidding?

To try and alleviate this, I suggested that she make plans with friends to do something on Monday or Tuesday nights.

She tried but got frustrated when her friends were busy those nights and wanted to get together on weekends.

This led to another argument with her telling me that she hates my new job and that I need to look into changing my hours again.

I told her that I have been trying everything to help ease the transition with my new job but all I’ve been met with is hostility and frustration.

True true.

I asked her if there was anything more I could do other than change my hours and she told me, “No.”

She said she just hates that she doesn’t get a break and that I have 3 days to myself.

I started listing off all the ways I have been trying to make this easier and how much more money we are making and she cut me off and said the money isn’t worth it.

I got frustrated and told her if she needs time for herself, she should just use vacation time from work if she’s not going to be reasonable and help me find a compromise.

She got even more mad and told me I am being an AH.

She made me sleep in the guest room and told me that I can’t come back to our bed unless I “fix this.”

Was suggesting she take time off work crossing the line, or was it a reasonable attempt at a solution?

Reddit says it was stupid.

In fact, most people think he’s kind of a big jerk.

This person says he needs a little more sympathy.

This person says his suggestion was insulting.

This person doesn’t necessarily think he’s the AH, but that this transition period is just really difficult.

When “take a break” turns into “sleep in the guest room,” clearly something has gone wrong.

They’re going to need to make some compromises to fix this!

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.