It’s many people’s dream to run their own business. After all, you get to dictate your own working hours – and choose exactly how to spend that time – and you get to see all the profits. It’s a romantic dream – but for many people, the reality is far from that.

After all, when you’re your own boss, everything is ultimately on you. Which means that if urgent work hasn’t been done, it’s your job to get it done in time, otherwise your clients will lose patience with you. There’s plenty of frustrating chasing of invoices and maybe even slow months without any income – and if your household is relying on that, its a tough situation to face.

Add to that the hurdles when starting out, and you find yourself in a situation that is plenty of people’s dreams, but can easily turn into a nightmare. And that’s the situation that the guy in this story has found himself in. For sure, he loves what he does, but overcoming the initial startup hurdle is leading to him having to put in extremely long hours – and his young family is suffering as a result.

Read on to find out how this is affecting everyone.

Spending my leisure time… working?

Soon I am going to lose my job. I make good money and have excellent benefits and time off, but my company is moving and my wife and I are staying to be near our families.

I do my best to be as good of a husband and father as possible. I spend a good amount of time with my wife and daughter, but after they go to bed (the baby nurses to sleep) and on my vacation days, I work.

I am in a very niche field, and I’m trying to develop a business to have some semblance of an income when I lose my job. I’d like to have some reassurance that this is going to work out before I actually have to give up my job.

But my wife doesn’t get this.

Let’s see how this couple work out their childcare.

We have set days each of us takes care of our daughter, the time we each do so is maybe 55% my wife and 45% me. She also takes an extra day off of work, as she refused to utilize the childcare we had lined up.

So when I take vacation from work to work on my business, my wife still expects me to split childcare 50/50, instead of me taking care of the necessary work to start a business. At this rate, I will never be able to get my business up and running.

On the days my wife typically cares for our little one, I still do offer support so she can take a break for a few hours. I just spend most of the days I’d typically be working at my day job, working toward my own business.

She took two days off per week to take care of our baby, I take one day off per week to do so. The evenings are pretty much an even split, and I take the lead on caring for the baby half of each weekend.

Read on to find out why his wife is upset.

I think the issue lies in the fact that I actually enjoy what I do. Even though it’s work and investing time to have a prosperous future for us, she resents it because I like my work.

I would definitely rather be fishing, drinking a beer, working out, etc. than doing this work, but I’ll settle so I know I can take care of my family.

AITA?

It seems like, rather than an outright resentment, there is probably a lack of clear communication between the couple.

Sure, the husband enjoys what he does and is happily building a new business, but does his wife know how anxious he is about losing his job – that that is the real reason why he is working so much?

Not in a spiteful “I’m doing this for you and the baby” shouted across the room in the midst of an argument kind of way, but an honest “I’m genuinely worried about providing for you both when I lose my job” said with raw emotion, at a point when she has time to listen.

If you enjoyed this post, check out this story about a sister who canceled a family dinner after realizing she’d been the only one putting in effort for years.

Let’s see what folks on Reddit made of this.

This person agreed that the husband and father needed to communicate better.

While others could see exactly why his wife was mad – and it wasn’t the reason he thought.

Meanwhile, this Redditor thought that he needed to reconsider his priorities.

There’s a lot of good reason for this guy to start a new business, especially if his specific expertise are so niche that he wouldn’t find employment in the local area, since the family are unwilling to move. But he and his wife have a baby, and that baby needs caring for too.

It’s clear that he is doing his best to split his time between being a present father and husband, and building a business that will help keep them financially cared for, but it’s really not working. Why? Because while he’s spending plenty of time caring for his young daughter, he’s spending any free time working on his business – and what quality time is that leaving for him and his wife?

His wife probably feels like her life has changed a lot after having her baby, and that is normal – but what she likely didn’t expect was the loss of any semblance of a relationship, and while she’s not in it alone she likely misses her partner. After all, she doesn’t love him for the money that he’s trying to make, she loves him for him. Of course she appreciates all the hard work he’s doing for them. But at the true heart of this? She probably just misses him.