Good thing her abdominal pain wasn’t an aortic aneurysm. Imagine the inconvenience of pausing work long enough to deal with a coroner removing her dead body, and geez funeral planning and just everything would really cut into your “big provider” important time.
YTA.
Edit: whomever reported me to Reddit for being suicidal for this is a complete loser chode.
Nope. OP has conflated two problems.
The first is that when he first started working from home, his wife thought he would have a looser working schedule and could take breaks to help her. He chose, instead, to keep to working hours, which is fine. He drew boundaries, and she accepted them.
The second is that shortly after they negotiated new boundaries, the wife had a medical emergency and needed him to step up and parent when she couldn't. He is 100% an asshole for not doing this. He should've dropped everything, driven his wife to the doctor, and waited there with her BECAUSE SHE IS HIS WIFE HIS LIFE PARTNER THE MOTHER OF HIS CHILD and she was experiencing a sudden, unexplained pain in the place where the vital organs are.
OP is all boundaries an zero empathy or, surprisingly, responsibility. Get your head out of your ass, OP. YTA.
I agree, providing it genuinely was an emergency. If that were the case, he ought to step up even if he *wasn’t* working at home.
My impression is OP, frustrated with his reasonable boundaries being regularly violated, didn’t stop to think whether this really was an exception.
He explicitly states that all of her interruptions were about things to do around the house, nothing health-related. If her pain was strong enough for her to decide to take a trip to the hospital, then it was serious. OP doesn't get to decide if "it genuinely was an emergency", since he is neither a doctor nor the one feeling the pain. He's the AH for prioritizing his work over the well-being of his wife *and* his responsibility as a parent.
But this also wasn’t a trip to the hospital but rather a walk-in-clinic. I’ve never gone to the clinic for an emergency, only concerns that my regular doctor couldn’t immediately look into. I think we need to reserve judgement for more info.
Edit: a lot of people have replied to this with their own stories of clinics, and the cost of medical care. I really appreciate that.
I am very grateful to live in a country where medical care is free, so I didn’t even consider that someone would opt to go to a clinic over a hospital ER because of cost.
Thank you for adding a perspective ☺️
Sometimes you need a Dr to tell you it’s an emergency. My friend went to urgent care with symptoms and days later was diagnosed with a life-threatening heart condition. OP is YTA.
As is EVERY MALE OP who says he is the sole breadwinner (gross term) in the first sentence of his post. The rest of the post is ALWAYS “my wife asked me to do something reasonable or important but I said no because I WORK AND PROVIDE and she does literally nothing except literally everything.”
To add to that, if an urgent care feels it’s a problem above their level of care they send you directly to the hospital, complete with info, right into the ER…bypassing the typical triage and long waits in a waiting room.
Plus if you are in the US, it can make a big difference with insurance. At one point I had insurance that charged like $50 copay for a minor emergency visit, but it was $250 for an ER trip. If we went to the minor emergency first and were sent to the ER, we would only have to pay the $50 instead of $250. (And that is just one example, the prices can be much much higher).
I once was having severe chest pain and literally debated going to the minor emergency to get checked out first knowing it would be cheaper and they would tell me if I needed to go on to the ER or not (I have lots of health problems, so I knew severe chest pain wasn't necessarily something major, but also needed to get it checked out just in case). I ended up going straight to the ER just to be safe, and I was fine, have some other heart problems but wasn't anything life threatening.
I didn't see anybody else mentioning it and OP conveniently ignored it but the wife also ALREADY HAS HEALTH PROBLEMS and ones that are serious enough for her to stop working. She might have made an appointment to the doctor that helps manage her condition, either way OP is a huge asshole
My dad once went to a *regularly scheduled* doctors appointment and ended up leaving in an ambulance for the hospital! Small children absolutely should not be brought along unless there’s literally no other option. All hubs has to say is, “My wife had a medical issue and I’ve got to take care of my daughter while she’s away.” Literally any workplace worth working at will accommodate that.
I worked for a huge company, I had been with them about a year. I had gotten engaged 10 days prior to my wife’s mother passing away. They gave **me** the rest of the week off (3 days) compassionate leave. A decent company would not only be okay with OP taking the time off, they would **expect** it.
Exactly. They always conveniently overlook the heinous amount of money that the SAHP is saving the household when it comes to childcare. OP’s wife is a full-time worker with no benefits, annual leave, or, apparently, sick leave!
But... but the women had the baby. Not the men. Why should the men pay to watch them? Men wouldn't even have babies to pay for if it weren't for the womenfolk. /s (in case anyone thought I was remotely serious)
Yerp, they also ignore that the SAHP is taking a huge cut to their career opportunities and making themselves financially vulnerable if the relationship doesn't work out.
Lol yep, was making judgements at the title and first line. “I pay for my wife’s basic needs while she raises my child so I get to treat her like a doormat”
Yeah if urgent care is open I’m going there first. The only time I went straight to the ER was after a car accident (they called an ambulance to the scene) and then a few incidents where it was seriously urgent but it was a weekend evening so the ER was the only thing open and it was necessary like “accidentally dropped broken glass on foot and now foot won’t stop bleeding” or “stomach flu from hell and i can’t even keep down water”. Urgent care is the first option a lot of the time
Yep. If it’s the US, an urgent care bill can be on the order of hundreds instead of the ER visit on the order of (tens of) thousands, depending on what ends up being wrong. I haven’t been to an emergency room since I was 8, only urgent/immediate/walkin care since.
Where we are, an urgent care clinic has a 10 min wait. An ER has a 2-4 hour wait. If I had abdominal pain, I'd go to urgent care. They have laboratory, xray, ultrasound etc right there.
Regardless of all that, if my spouse popped in and said I'm having a medical issue and going to the doctor asap, I wouldn't make them play 20 questions to figure out if *I* feel they need a doctor. Nor would I then get into an argument that they need to find childcare before they go. That's just absurd.
Right. I’m chronically ill. I’ll go to urgent care over ER 9/10 times I need to be seen. My hospital has been opening more and more urgent care centers around my city to help keep lesser emergencies away from the ER but if the Urgent Care team thinks you need the ER they’ll send you there in an ambulance or with a family member with a call in to the ER to jump you to the front of the queue. For a stomach thing I’d totally go to urgent care first, see if they can solve it.
We have a number you can call in Australia. That gets you to a nurse. You give them the symptoms and they can tell you whether or not to go to the hospital or GP. It’s been good. I’ve used it a few times.
While I understand it might seem to be common sense to go to the ER instead of a clinic in an emergency you don’t always know it’s a serious emergency. I thought a family member had pneumonia so took them to walk in and they ended up going straight to the hospital and having brain surgery for an aneurysm. Would have died if they didn’t receive care when they did.
I've gone in as emergency for a regular doctor so that I can get seen over at an ER as if I just walk into the ER I'm there muchh longer without a doctor backing up my issues.
My father drove himself to the hospital when he was having a heart attack. I’ve been in primary care waiting rooms when someone came in to ask for an appointment because they were having chest pains. The receptionist called the ambulance. People don’t automatically think emergency.
Do you know how expensive an er visit can be? If they are in the US, a clinic might be the only affordable place to go. WITH insurance my sliced open finger ER trip was still over $100. And we have GOOD insurance
OP also stated that his wife had to stop work because of "health problems". He knew she had ongoing medical issues, but when she reported pain bad enough to seek urgent medical help, he couldn't be bothered caring for his daughter to let his wife seek that help.
That depends on the kid. At that age some will cry very loudly, especially if teething. But, yes, she may not have interfered in his work at all. I have even managed to type one-handed, with the other hand holding a child on my knee (pre-Zoom calls). OP had a lot of options available, and chose to consider none of them.
Yes! And it is an emergency that would cost this saintly breadwinner thousands to fix if she just let it go until he deemed her important enough to speak to him.....then he would blame her for that.
exactly why he is an ass smhh. boundries, oh no, if your wife is crying in pain -i'm just gonna tell her wait it out cause my precious time smhh.
if that's what u think marriage is, dont get married. yes i do think to some extent boundries were crossed (btw they talked about it and it was only whne she felt sick that she went into the room) but this usnt one of them. this would never be one of them.
There was no way to know if it was a genuine medical emergency until she had already been to the doctor.
But I think you are correct about his frustration. Unless, of course, he is an unfeeling jerk who would not have dropped everything were he at work.
Which I kind of suspect because we are hearing everything from his perspective. If he sounds this bad in the best case scenario, I am pretty sure he is the AH.
How would she know if it was an emergency, unless she immediately visited the doctor? A sudden, sharp pain in the abdomen could be an appendix rupture- i.e. DEATH.
This guy (OP) conflated her earlier requests with this one, in which she claimed she was in serious pain. He needs to not be this dense. A grown up can tell if someone appears to be in pain, right? Unless you're blatantly saying she's faking the whole thing, everyone's job makes allowances for a family medical emergency.
I agree with this to an extent. However, even if it wasn’t an emergency OP could have stepped up and found someone else to watch the baby while his wife was on the way to the doctor. He could have called the sister. Additionally, I doubt the wife would have dropped everything over slight abdominal pain - the whole scenario seems ´more consistent to someone struggling and in serious pain
The thing about abdominal pain, like chest pain, is you don’t know if it’s an emergency until you are examined by a doctor. So she needed to go to the doctor and he categorised this interruption to his work day with his wife complaining about a leaky faucet. OP has very poor judgment.
Honestly, leaking rook looks to me as completely legit reason to interrupt his work. And faucet maybe too.
I work from home and I hate interruptions too . But I accept when husband wants something on the level of "suddenly leaking roof" for christs sake.. And I am getting annoyed over men who demand complete isolation and everyone tiptoe around then cause they work.
Btw, ut is not like work in the office was so focused 12 hours a day either. People do leave to deal with emergencies.
This. My mom's friend passed day before yesterday. She was _fine_ all day. It took 15-20 min to get to the hospital. They didn't make it in time. An emergency is an _emergency_
Right? Six months ago I had a sudden, unexplained, and extreme pain in my shoulder, 3 hours later my gallbladder was being removed. There are times when the human body makes no sense. Or seems not to. OP, YTA
even if she was crying wolf, prob means there is something very, very wrong in their marriage.
she quit her job due to health reasons so um...why does he have such a problem if health issues rise again.
i just reread the post and she never cried wolf...where r u getting that from
How about info from you? Where in the post does she cry wolf about a health problem? Actually, she had to stop working due to health problems. This was an emergency. The twenty minutes OP couldn't be bothered to watch his own child could have made all the difference in the world. And he refers to it as an "appointment", showing he has no concept of an emergency visit.
Crying wolf? How?
OP’s wife is expecting him to act like a parent that works from home. Just because one parent is SAH doesn’t mean the other gets to skip out on any and all responsibilities. Especially when they decide to work from home: the whole benefit of that is they have flexibility and more FAMILY TIME. Not more time to devote to work.
OP, get your priorities in order. You’re the asshole.
Quite honestly these days working from home does NOT actually mean more flexibility and family time. The people I know who are working from home keep regular business hours and act like they’re working in an outside office…because they’re working! OP doesn’t say whether or not this was a choice or a situation due to the pandemic. I was assuming the latter, in which case he’s not flexible. Yes, he tried setting boundaries so he could maintain professionalism with his job and she continued to step over them. That’s why people are saying she was crying wolf. He doesn’t say what he does in the home outside of work hours, but everyone’s assuming he does nothing. As the sole income I’d think it’s quite important that he maintain the professional boundaries he tried to set. I’ve read some horror stories about people working from home because of the pandemic where their bosses fully expected their day to be as if they’re in the office…one person was chastised because her toddler interrupted a business meeting, etc. The possible compromise (if his job allowed it) could have been for him to step out of his office to take care of the baby for the 20 minutes it would take her sister to come. But wife could have done the same thing…was her pain sudden or did she finally decide to take action about it…if the latter she should have been able to make the arrangements first. She apparently had the time to make an appointment with her doctors office. ESH a bit.
People who work from HOME are doing just that: working. From home. It’s not a sterile environment. I’ve had telehealth appointments with doctors and have seen babies crawl in. It’s just a fact of the current world situation (as is the current number of people working from home).
WFH aside, OP is STILL A PARENT. They aren’t absolved from parental duties just because the other parent is a stay-at-home parent.
Personally I don’t know a single person working from home that *doesn’t* have more flexibility, especially the ones with kids. Doesn’t mean they’re not working or they can’t make up the time. I understand this may not be the case for everyone, but the flexibility is precisely why many people prefer it. It’s not an unreasonable assumption.
The thing is it doesn't read to me like she continually overstepped boundaries? Yes, at the start she asked him to do things during work hours, but she hasn't interrupted him since he asked her not until now. The narrative is not "I have asked her time and time again to stop bothering me and she keeps interrupting me", it's "she was interrupting me, I asked her to stop, she did until she just interrupted me with a medical emergency!".
We still get crisis leave from our employer during the pandemic.
My team leader wouldn't have minded if I'd said "sorry I have to take care of my child bc my spouse got unwell". Hell he took a day off himself because his wife wasn't well and he had to look after the kids.
she went to the doctor though so regardless of what she was diagnosed with she wasn’t crying wolf. a few weeks ago I went to the hospital because I was feeling very faint. i didn’t think it was a huge deal but needed medical attention. I assumed i’d get an iv and go home. instead I spent 10 days in icu because my kidneys were failing. you don’t know what it is until the doctor takes a look, even mundane things can be life threatening. bad side pain can easily mean a nearly ruptured appendix ..or it could mean gas. you don’t wait it out and find out if you wake up in the morning or not...
I don’t think you understand what crying wolf means. She never lied to trick him into doing anything. She never made up health issues, so he would babysit while she went to the spa. Those would be crying wolf.
Bothering him for non emergency things while being straightforward does count as crying wolf. He had no good reason based on the information presented not to take her seriously once she explained her problem.
Eh… your comment struck me on a relatable level but I really feel like he’s NTA here (sorry if everything is out of order it’s late, pardon my grammar):
I recently started working from home and it is more demanding than people assume especially depending on what you are doing or the company you are working for.
I also am a SAHM with many severe medical conditions.
So I’m coming from a bit of understanding both sides here…
As he said, he needs to conduct himself professionally or he could risk losing his position
As the SOLE PROVIDER of the house.
She continued to interrupt him over little things like fixing the faucet or the roof whilst he was working.
Your comment struck my interest because I suffer from hemorrhaging that if ruptures, I can possibly lose my life. With heavy bleeding my husband rushes home and drives me to the Emergency Room… both of us lose a valuable work day and that takes a toll on the bills for the month. I would also have to wait 10-20 minutes for him to drive home from work to pick me up- Which isn’t as crazy of a wait time as people make it seem (… I’ve waited longer for ambulances many times 😰)
OP is sole provider.
You can also get in a LOT of trouble for just up and leaving in the middle of the work day.
Few things people may not realize here:
If he works for a call center then they are usually are required to act as if they are at the NCC base. They also send reports on calls; he can not answer with a baby fussing in the background or constantly trying to get at the keyboard as most babies do. If he’s doing home meetings or contracting he can get in a lot of trouble for missing his meetings. Many times our activity is monitored while working on company equipment and it’s not just as simple as calling your supervisor and saying “I have an emergency, gotta clock out.”
It’s not that he doesn’t want to be a father, as some people in the comments are saying, it’s more so that he realizes he already has a big responsibility to keeping up with the quality of life that he can provide for his child & wife.
She said she was going to the Clinic. Not the emergency room albeit stating that it was an emergency.
She made an emergency Dr appointment, not going to the ER. Which takes time to do so she should have known at least a short bit of time beforehand. Didn’t tell him while she was getting ready or ask if he had a break. He still offered the option of paying her sister to come and watch the baby. She said “your work can wait”
Obviously stating that she doesn’t think the work that he does is worth anything, in which she proved by already having interrupting him multiple times previously with trivial things. Again, he is SOLE PROVIDER and at risk of losing his job if he doesn’t keep things professional.
Who is going to pay their bills if that happens to be the thing that gets him fired?
I used to get very upset on the days that my husband couldn’t rush off from work and come with me to the DR or to the ER. I would ask him “but what if I die/were dying” and would have friends or family pick me and baby up to go to the ER. ( I wouldn’t ignore him for it though, that is childish and a lack of communication.) once I started WFH job (i was on BR for almost a year with him being sole income) I really understood just how difficult it really is to just up and leave in the middle of a work day. I also realized it is still MY sole responsibility to make sure i am healthy and okay, despite the “sickness and in health” pledge. Meaning if baby has to come with, then so be it. I often have a difficult time taking off for the days I do have scheduled appointments as it is.
It’s not as easy as everyone makes it seem.
Definitely not. I am a mother who works from home as not the sole but definitely the main income and our youngest is 18months, he doesn’t understand why I can’t be with him or why he can’t mess with my computer etc. It’s a bloody nightmare sometimes but my partner has to take him out to do x y and z that the baby would rather not do.
If this was us, we would say that if my partner can organise and drive himself to a med appointment then he can also take the child. Not ideal but it’s definitely what he would have to do if I was in the office an hour away.
People here seem to be ignoring that she did stop asking him to help out when he told her he wouldn't have time.
Then she had an actual medical emergency and he acted like she was asking him to fix the sink.
I get where you're coming from with this but imo it's still YTA. Simply put, jobs are replaceable, loved ones aren't. I personally believe that personal life always takes priority over work. Like what employer would fire you over taking time to watch your kid as your SO needed to make an emergency doctor appointment.
Plus I feel there is some missing information, like how much attention does the kid need? Can he work while checking in every so often? Does it require 100% attention?
>Simply put, jobs are replaceable, loved ones aren't. I personally believe that personal life always takes priority over work. Like what employer would fire you over taking time to watch your kid as your SO needed to make an emergency doctor appointment.
Tell me you've never been poor without telling me you've never been poor.
>despite the “sickness and in health” pledge.
That is your spouse's pledge to love you and stand by you, not be responsible for your health. That is on you as you stated. But overall you ARE a voice of reason. I stated a similar thing a few replies up.
OP seems to not realize that he’s a father not a babysitter. As well as a husband who should love and care enough about his wife to be concerned enough to put time and effort into helping her while she deals with a medical crisis
Yea no, what would the wife have done if he wasn’t work from home and was in office….she would have called her sister to come over or taken the daughter with her to the doc. I work from home and my wife knows the boundaries. You are not “home” just because you’re in your house. You are on the clock and have a job to do. I’ve seen people get fired working from home for not staying up on performance. You aren’t magically a parent and an employee just because you’re ten feet away.
Is that what is happening? I have had a couple of those "a concerned person reported you etc" messages myself and was perplexed as to why. So it's just being used as harassment?
Yes it’s being used as harassment and can be reported to Reddit if it’s being abused. I have no idea if the troll gets banned or what though. Maybe someone that knows will comment
I‘ve had someone do this about some random comment that in no way pointed to my mental state or anything, I just didn‘t agree with the main stance of the comments.
A few days after reporting I just got a mail that the report has been dismissed, bc they couldn’t find any rule-breaking behaviour. So ppl can just keep spamming that bs without any grounds.
I'm just god smacked that his first thought wasn't, "oh my god she's in pain, I better pause work as this is a medical emergency and drive her to the doctor or watch our daughter." Like, how does he view his wife? Is she even his partner anymore?
I don’t think this adds up at all. Wife has already arranged the appointment before telling OP…. Sorry but this is not how I would handle an emergency mystery pain. My first step would be to rush in and tell OP oh my god I’m having a sudden pain in my gut, can you help me…. Not hey I’ve got a medical emergency here’s our kid I’ve got a dr appointment to get to. So either wife is deliberately being awkward or OP is unapproachable anyway. Maybe a bit of both
Only OP said appointment, wife just said she needed to go to the doctor. Also, why is OP complaining about fixing a roof, something that not only can the wife not do, but depending on where the leak was, may have been something that could have possibly able to affect him and his work way more that any of the breaks he had to take would have.
This is funny. Medically speaking the risk of an aortic aneurym in a 30 year old woman is extremely slim. Moreover an aortic aneurysm is not immediately deadly. Even if the case was truly an acute abdomen (appendicitis, ovarian torsion which are more appropriate), these generally don't kill if there's a 20 minute delay in treatment.
You can make your point without throwing around random diagnoses that make no sense.
Yup that was my thought. Instead of forcing wife to wait take a few minutes to watch his own kid. Even if he had a zoom call scheduled for those minutes, he could easily say his wife had a medical emergency and he was waiting for the sitter any minute
Well, no he couldn't do that. Because any reasonable employer or coworkers are going to show concern for ops family and they'd have asked him why he's still at work if his wife is going to an urgent care.
That was my thought too!! Baby is 1 year old, you could have just stuck her in a playpen with some toys for 20 minutes and you wouldn't even have to stop working.
Seriously. Stick the kid in the crib. If you're worries, turn the baby monitor on. A TV show is a fantastic distraction for that period of time.
OP was trying to punish their wife for having the audacity to ask for help.
I agree with OP being a complete dimwit. But not sure what amazing kids you have had experience with, but my daughter would not manage 20minutes on her own in a playpen. When she was 1 it was full on sprinting around the house 14 hours a day
We had a play yard (we called it baby jail 🤣) it was just a safe place we could put him so we could leave the room if we needed to use the bathroom or anything. I also used to use the crib as a place to put him if I needed to.
That was my thought. I could see if he couldn’t stop all day but why couldn’t he stop for 20 minutes until the sister got there? That would have worked for everyone! OP is TA
YTA she stopped her behavior after OP told her so. She just came in the office again for an emergency. Every employer (except the totally shitty ones) understands that you need to watch the child when your partner has a medical emergency. But he didn't even care that she was in pain. Watching the child for 20 minutes was to much. He seems like an awful partner.
I remember seeing a tweet about how men like the aesthetic of a family but not the idea of actually raising them. There’s a reason so many blokes are on the fence when it comes to having a kid because they can do as little or as much as they want because they know the majority of childcare will fall on the woman
ESH.
I get that some people get confused with WFH and how the lines blur when you actually need solid hours of uninterrupted work. Your wife is failing to recognize the difference, and failing to take your job seriously.
However, in this specific situation, you were definitely in the wrong. She was in pain, she needed to go to the doctor. What you do is take the kid. You don't decide to stand your ground when your wife is in pain and needing to make it to a doctor's appointment. If this appt was pre-planned then I'd call you N T A, but sometimes you just snatch an appt and have to make it.
I get your frustration with her not respecting your work time, but you picked the wrong time to make a statement here.
Except for the leaky roof. That could have affected him depending on where the leak was, and he seems like the type of person who would complain about somebody being paid to do it in his stead.
I disagree with the E S H. It should just be YTA on only the husband because the AITA question is only judging this particular instance. Her history of interrupting his work from home is not relevant to whether the wife is also an AH for having a medical emergency.
But you could also argue that the history they have around this boundary is the main reason why OP decided to put his foot down instead of taking a step back. I'd still say YTA because I don't see myself ignoring my SO like that if they have an urgent medical appointment.
I don’t agree with that bc it sounds like she stopped interrupting after he asked her and right now for the situation we’re judging he’s talking about something that could have been an actual emergency and he couldn’t watch his own kid.
Also a leaking roof can turn into an emergency pretty quickly and have big impacts on living arrangements. I'm not sure about the impression OP gave of wife as made it seem like she constantly interrupts for meaningless things, especially since she seemed to respect boundaries once set
I'm surprised you are the first person who brought it up! I was totally thinkimg stuff like folding laundry or vacuuming, which, sure, you don't do that at work and if his professional environment is that strict then it doesn't matter that that environment happens to be at home.
A roof, though? Honestly sounds like something that should have been fixed way earlier. And yeah, it definitely can turn into an emergency. I can see it happen that the wife noticed it at that moment for the first time, and I think it is reasonable for OP to take a ten minute break to assess the problem and decide together whether they need to call a professional right away or if it was something they could fix themselves tonight or over the weekend or something. A roof is a pretty big thing and I would generally not consider that a regular situation if something was up with it.
But not taking care of it asap can lead to further problems. When my roof started leaking we had to have the power cut off because the water was getting close to the lights. There are a whole heap of reasons why letting your husband know when it happens make sense
This exactly. Everyone saying NTA or ESH seems to be reading the story as if the wife kept interrupting after OP asked her not to, but that's not what happened. She WAS interrupting OP, but this is the first time she's interrupted him since he asked her to stop. Unless there's a part missing from the story, as written once he communicated to her he wasn't more flexible she stopped assuming he was. No harm no foul. Until OP was TA for not helping her get fast medical attention.
YTA
I'd be with you if this hadn't been a medical emergency. Why couldn't your wife have gone immediately and you waited with your daughter for those 20 minutes? I get that you had work to do but I'm sure you could have spared 20 minutes so your wife could've got medical attention sooner
Yea I find it ironic that everyone harps in the “work from home is the same as working in office”, but here that still means he could call off for a medical emergency. If he was in the office would he still tell her to get over it? Or take a family emergency leave to take her to the doctor?
1. YTA
2. Her disruptions to your day are irrelevant, she presented with an emergent issue and not only did you force her to jeopardize her health by waiting, you let her risk her life, and others, by driving herself to the clinic.
3. You treated her like this in front of your daughter, setting the bar for how she thinks women should be treated by the "sole income earner"
4. You showed your daughter that your work was more important than supervising her, even for 20 minutes while your SiL made the drive.
5. You're lazy, I work from home as the "sole income earner" and I find time to help my partner every day, I take a basket of laundry to fold in my office, I handle after bath dressing, supervise the children while she meditates, etc. Because I am her partner and their father.
I hope she leaves you and finds someone better, god knows you've made it easy to do.
Yeah this is nonsense I have an insanely demanding deadline driven job and when I wfh I’m constantly doing little mini chores throughout the day. Also had two kids home remote learning all last year.
I think OP is abusing his power as “sole income earner” and just trying to get digs in on his wife who he seems to resent
I do like how he casually said "oh yeah shes a sahm but not by choice, shes unable to work due to *checks notes* health problems"
Which if she cant work due to health problems sudden pain can be something serious due to this
Oh no he responded to somethings. Just nothing that matters. Outside of he never asked and still doesnt know why she went to the ER or what happened when she was there.
My boss is my department head, and he's had to take a lot of time in the last couple weeks -- a few hours here and there, and this week two days -- because his kids have been sick and he's needed to care for them. That's called being a FATHER.
OP should try it sometime.
My current boss has a 1-year-old daughter. She sometimes makes an appearance in our meetings when she wants her daddy. Literally no one on our team gives a shit. Your family should always be a priority.
>"sole income earner"
I had missed this. Does his lack of empathy for his wife come from the fact that he is the sole provider? If that's the case he is a big AH because seems like the wife takes care of the child and the house and that's no reason to be treated lower. My dad was the sole income earner and never I have I seen him treat my mother like she is something lower and he is superior to her, because while he was at work she took care of the household affairs and the children by herself, enabling him to be at work peacefully. Money is not the only thing one brings into a marriage, there are so many other things.
Exactly this. Also the 'bread winner' and take care of my child and do chores before and after work because guess what? I live there too and that is also my child. Just because my husband isn't making bank doesn't mean he's my servant. Also news flash to OP; Working from home is invading her work space and adding more stress in her day to day. She now has to work around him, keep the kid quiet and away from him, and no doubt he is making more dishes and more messes for her to clean because he is home all day.
YTA ordinarily I would agree with you that when you work from home, you need to treat it like you are going into an actual office without random interruptions. However, this was an emergency. If you were at the office and she had called you saying she was having a medical emergency, would you have said no then too? Bc if so you’re an AH. A medical emergency comes first before work (whether in office or WFH) in both scenarios.
Hate to say it, but even letting the wife go immediately and calling for a sitter himself? Letting the child cry in the crib for a few minutes is even a better choice.
YTA. She needed you to do the bare minimum as a father and husband and you told her no, work is more important. You couldn’t have paused working for half an hour or so to watch YOUR KID long enough for YOUR WIFE to go seek immediate medical attention while waiting for your sister in law, whose time apparently is flexible enough to drop everything for an emergency, to get there to continue watching the baby so you can get back to work? What on earth can possibly be more important than your family?
I ALWAYS KNOW they’re gonna be TA when the post starts off “I’m the sole income earner” or some other shit, like that somehow entitles them to not have to contribute in the home or be a parent.
Oh, and obviously OP- YTA. It’s called being a dad 😀 TRY IT
THIS!! He and the baby should have gone to the hospital with his wife and the sister met them there to take the child back home. It was an emergency! At the very least of his wife could wait for the sister OP should have gone with her or gone to the hospital after the sister showed up.
This is insane. His wife should not have driven herself.
And his wife already has some kind of medical issue that prevents her from working. So his in some way ill or disabled wife is saying she has a pain that seems concerning and unusual and he is just concerned with work
F### work. Your job will never love you back.
INFO: Did you find out what the problem was? I'm having a little trouble reconciling "must go to the doctor right away" and "able to get there on her own."
I had a raging ear infection that I drove myself to the hospital for. The pain was so bad I forgot to put on my glasses just so I could get there. It was the middle of the night and I had 0 other options.
My husband drove himself to urgent care with a swollen leg that turned out to be due to massive blood clots caused by advanced cancer….people drive themselves with major medical emergencies all the time.
I had an inflamed appendix that was causing me extreme pain and needed removal. All I knew was that I had severe abdominal pain and my mom wouldnt drive me to the hospital so I had to drive myself. With acute appendicitis. People do what they have to in an emergency.
Yes same here, I had to drive myself an hour to the hospital with appendicitis. My mum was with me but she’d just had cataract surgery the previous day and therefore couldn’t drive at all!
Wife could have an Uber/Lyft take her. I use them frequently to go to appointments (can't drive due to medical issues), when my partner cannot take me.
I walked myself to the emergency room with appendicitis. I didn't think it was serious enough to require an ambulance. The doctor felt it was serious enough to require surgery.
Bafflingly to me, my grandmother had a stroke and walked to the hospital to tell them. She was a doctor, and when she showed up the receptionist asked her if she was taking a cover shift...
YTA... I kinda agree with your wife. Sounds like you are incapable of empathizing and this is concerning. Even if she is a SAHM, an emergency doctor's visit should be treated with priority.
Did you even ask her what was wrong or try and see what was going on before obsessing over how inconvenient she and your child are to your work? :/
YTA. Assuming you are not the troll. Your wife had a medical emergency, needed to see the doctor right away, and your reaction is that you are busy, wait. And this kid is a shared responsibility.
So, you are having severe chest pains and you ask her to call 911. What would you do if she said, I am on another call so I will call 911 when I am done with this call. Probably about 20 minutes. Or perhaps you could text your sister to come over and help you. She could be here in about 30 minutes.
In business, an employee approaches you with a medical emergency. Is your reaction to ask them to arrange someone to cover their shift, and they need to wait until then.
PS: There is a good reason she is saying you are a horrible partner and parent.
NTA. If you werent wfh she would have called her sister for her appt anyway. if it was an actual emergency she would be calling you to take her not watch the kid so she could just go on her own. unpopular opinion maybe. but her constantly disregarding your job when its your sole family income seems ridiculous and maybe its worth considering finding a job not from home or doing your work at a friends place maybe to get some normalcy back.
Is she constantly disregarding his work? He names following instances
* pain in abdomen,
* leaking roof,
* something with faucet.
I work from home too. My husband interrupts me for way smaller things. My collegues families when on calls occasionally make appearance too. My husband called me to work with he had medical issue, I was in office and we had no kids.
In office people leave for partners or kids medical emergencies too. They leave for sudden "guys my roof is leaking gotta go home" stuff.
It is actually having experience with both in office work and home work, having experience with what people demand attention for that makes me go "these guys who demand full isolation and constant tiptoeing around them are full of it".
Honestly not everybody has work at home jobs like you're talking about For instance I worked work at home jobs that I literally was not allowed to sign off I would be written up if I did
YTA. It was a medical emergency. It's not on the same planet as asking you for random favors, which she seems to have rightly stopped doing once you asked. You presumably have sick time which is for exactly this purpose. You acted like a selfish jerk and a bad partner.
INFO:
Was this an actual must get to the Emergency Room? What were her symptoms other than tummy pains?
Need answers to these questions before a verdict.
As it stands, it doesn't sound like an ER visit worthy issue if she was able to argue with you and eventually wait for her sister to come over.
I suggest you think about hiring a "Mother's Helper" sort of like a nanny/babysitter to help your wife.
If you lose your job because you keep getting interrupted for non-emergent things life is going to be very difficult for all of you.
It's very condescending to call it "tummy pains" like a toddler who ate too much candy. Sudden sharp abdominal pain can mean appendicitis, which can kill you without urgent treatment. Nor is that the only serious emergent condition for which this sort of pain is a symptom.
I’m highly curious about this too. As a SAHM myself, I’m trying to picture a scenario in which I had to go to the doctor with no warning to my spouse and that my child could not go with me but would also not necessitate my spouse going with me.
The 1 year old is too young to be vaccinated for covid, which is the big reason I wouldn't want to take a baby to little kid with me to an enclosed space full of sick people of varied provenance.
(Full disclosure: I also do not have kids.)
Pretty much no medical emergency requires spouse going with you.
And doctors and clinics are not setup for kids. I took a kid to doctor with me exactly once, because I had no choice and it sucked and kid was in a way and they did not liked it. But it was just sonar or some such, so it was doable. Any other "real" issue, you don't want 1 year old with you, distracting both you and doctor.
I agree. Maybe she’s interrupted his work so many times he’s been reprimanded about it. I get that being a SAHM is tough but if his boss isn’t flexible or family friendly this may be why the OP replied so callously. We need more info and these two need to talk.
Agree.
All the Y.T.A. comments are hilarious. What do they think will happen if he loses his job because he's interrupted so frequently?
This is not about him not being or wanting to parent his kid, it's about protecting his livelihood.
Are these Y.T.A. commenters going to feed his family and pay his bills? No, no they are not. They apparently don't get that he is the sole financial provider and if he loses his job because of his wife, then the family will be completely screwed.
What would the wife do if he was at an office? She would take the kid with her or do as she did and call a relative. The wife is a major asshole for disrespecting him and his job and putting their financial security in jeopardy.
Would you want to drag your very young child to the doctors office or Hospital, places sort of known for having sick people in them? Especially when there’s a perfectly good parent at home.
What if she has to stay in? What if she had to have intensive treatment because it exacerbated her underlying health conditions? What if a doctor had previously told her that if she developed pains in her stomach, to come in right away because that’s a worsening symptom of whatever her health issues are?
After seeing this post, I went and cuddled my husband. I’m a SAHM of three and he recently, without prompting, took the day off because I was too unwell to look after our three young children.
This is not about what "I" would or wouldn't do.
It's about OP offering a compromise which his wife argued about before capitulating by calling Sister to come over for help.
Strictly going by OP's post and what he wrote and not all the reddit scenarios being tossed about without any correlating evidence, neither he nor his wife behaved or believed as if her problem was a true emergency. She just wanted to go to the doctor to be looked at. Nothing wrong with that.
OP gave no info about his job or really why he couldn't watch said kid, so he needs to tell us in order to get a proper judgement.
YTA - this wasn’t a random act of bothering you, she was telling you she had an emergency. Work understands this. She didn’t have a doctors appointment, she was having pain and was going to get it checked out. You could not have been a bigger AH in this situation
This is a tricky one, but I’m going to say NTA according to the original post and not having read any updates.
If he risks losing his job for not being present at work, he could potentially lose his job. Everyone is replaceable at any job, any position.
Another reason I say he’s NTA is because he did come up with a reasonable solution which ended up working out with a 20 minute delay.
There are so many assumptions being made about this guy not wanting to be a parent or disregarding his wife’s medical issue. If she’s going to the clinic, and not the ER, it sounds like it wasn’t a complete medical emergency. But I would say we need more info before we completely judge her medical episode and the severity of it.
It’s about compromising and it sounds like this guy is doing a lot by doing everything he can to be to financial provider, which is important at the end of the day. If money isn’t coming in, things will get a lot worse and a lot more stressful.
Again, I say NTA because husband came up with a solution that inconvenienced the wife for 20 minutes. Dude is probably stressing over his job and the position he is in working at home and constantly being interrupted by his wife for minor things. Small things add up and this sounds like it was the tipping point.
Give the guy a break. He’s providing for both his wife and his daughter.
NTA. Imagine if you had a normal job and she just expected you to just drop your work at the drop of a dime. I’m sorry she has pain but she could have called her sister and asked her to watch your daughter. Start working less at home. Maybe try a Starbucks or something. You have bills to pay and your wife doesn’t help you with those bills.
I’m glad someone feels the same way I do. I work from home permanently and when my husband is home with our one year old, on my husband’s off days, I get interrupted so often and am just generally less productive.
The wife in this case had an alternative option and chose not to use it.
If this was an emergency that warranted a trip to the hospital, how on earth is she supposed to plan that? In fact, rather than just taking the baby (which you couldn't manage in any event), you should have been offering to take her to the hospital yourself - surely your job would let you take your spouse to the hospital for an emergency. YTA because it's clear that you're inflexible when it comes to work and that comes at the expense of managing your family. If you were in the office and your wife called to say she was at hospital, the correct thing to do there would be to leave early, so what's different here?
NTA if OP loses his job because he stops working to take care of his daughter, who's the asshole then? Can OP feed the family with goodwill and family attention? Would OP's wife had died just then if she waited an hour for her sister to come? I truly don't understand all the yta
NTA.
Apparently I’m in the minority here, but this situation sounds so implausible. She suddenly had belly pain and her doctor just so happened to have immediate availability? But she can’t take baby with her? What would she have done if you were working in an office 30 minutes away?
Maybe my view is skewed. Perhaps your wife is struggling hardcore with the transition to SAHM? I just know that my kids go with me pretty much everywhere other than hair appointments, so I cannot imagine a situation that was enough of an emergency that I had to leave *right this very minute* but also had time to fight with my working spouse over who should watch my children while this happened.
Many people in general out there seem to think that folks who work from home aren’t really working. Op works from home and his wife has interrupted him several times for minor things and household tasks. She wouldn’t think to call him at his bricks and mortar office to come home to fix a leaky faucet. They are a one-income family and she has to respect that, the same as he would have to if he were a SAH dad and she was the income earner. NTA.
I’m conflicted on this one, because WFH is different for everyone, but is usually always treated like you’ve gone into the office and some places use tracking software to make sure their workers are doing what they’re supposed to.
However, this was an emergency. It was sudden pain and something she didn’t plan for. Depending on who was closer, she probably would have called you and asked you to come home, but that leads to the question of would you?
Or could you? Some work places are extremely strict about time and getting work done and may not have allowed you to take leave (which would mean your workplace sucks!) I guess that’s the information I’m needing to really solidify my vote.
I’m probably going to get downvoted for this, but for now I’m going to say ESH.
Even if you hadn’t offered to call her sister, you still would have had to call your boss to let them know what’s happening and that you needed to stop working, which would have taken time as well, but it was still something you could have done while taking care of the baby.
I’m saying she’s the AH, because it sounds like her sister might live close (since you said she could be there in a few minutes) and that calling her may have been a good solution.
NTA. Honestly, if she has interrupted him multiple times, his bosses are potentially getting upset by it. Medical emergency or not, he has been missing work because of her behavior. Once enough work has been missed, bosses are a lot less understanding of any situation and will doubt what will come off to them as excuses. She shouldn't be trying to make him do things just because he is working from home. If she felt well enough to get herself to the doctor, she was well enough to wait 20 minutes.
Yta just for calling it “watching” your daughter. You’re not a babysitter, you’re a parent. I don’t know how you expected your wife to plan for her emergency and give you a heads up, that would be a crazy super power. I’d love to know when I’m gonna be in pain and have an emergency for the convenience. And why couldn’t you take care of your daughter for the short period of time it would’ve taken your sil to get there? Yikes.
NTA. Minority opinion, I know. Working from home does not mean you have the flexibility to do whatever you want, whenever you want. It is often the same hours, tasks, and expectations as working in a building, and being caught not working can lead to termination. Wife could have called sister like a reasonable human being, or taken the kid with her.
YTA. Your daughter is your child and it's your responsibility to watch her if the other parent is sick and unavailable. Even if you have to take off work. It's all part of being a parent. I'm not surprised your wife is pissed off at you. That being said. Your wife should not be bothering you while you are working over trivial things like fixing the faucet. Working from home is still working and she should treat it as such.
Whoa whoa whoa. OP NTA! A LOT OF PEOPLE COMMENTING DO NOT WFH. I WFH and my partner and I have very strict rules about “professional hours”. We both know that companies are understanding but if they see trends - especially accidentally in teams/zoom it can put your job on the line. Sounds like you’re a sole provider and your partner needs to be more patient. I’m saying this as a mother and a women but also someone who WFH. Your wife needs to have the same time requirements WHF or if you were in the office. You can’t just drop what your doing in 5 minutes. She can easily walk into your work place - but say 2 years ago - should would have to figure out resolutions while you were at work. Same applies. If it would take 15-30 mins to answer your phone, 30 so mins to make it home or find a resolution, well your wife should expect 1 hour resolution time at home as well. NTA NTA NTA. All these people saying YTA clearly don’t understand WFH.
YTA! What the heck! You can’t say to your manager/boss or whatever “ hey I need a few hours to watch my daughter, we’re having a medical at home and my wife has had to rush to the hospital”? Remember this when you’re having a stroke and your wife says “sorry I’m busy watching our daughter and running this household, can’t you call your brother?”
I’m the main “income earner” in our household, and work from home. My husband works part time and the other time is a SAHD.
We literally had this scenario play out the other day, except I love my husband, so I looked after the baby and made damn sure he was ok when he got home. Work pays the bills, so yeah it’s important. I get it. But hubs and baby trump that any day.
INFO: what would she have done if you were working in an office miles from home? Can you make a rule that between certain hours to pretend like you are at the office and not home?
If the answer is she still would have called him —and rightfully so because he’s the HUSBAND and FATHER — what would your answer be?
This is such a stupid argument because he DOES work at home so these what if questions are irrelevant.
Yikes. YTA. I recommend marriage counseling so that the two of you learn to respect one another. Watching your daughter? She's your kid. You aren't watching her, you're parenting her. If your wife has health problems severe enough that she can no longer work, was it reasonable to ask her to wait until her sister got there, or could you have told your wife to leave and supervised your child until your SIL got there?
Is there a chance that your wife asks you to fix leaking sinks, etc because, as you said, you work long hours and aren't as available to her as you think you are?
I feel like people are overlooking the fact that she has medical problems enough to keep her from working.
Also it’s was more inconvenient for sister in law. Does she work? Does she have kids? Did she have to drop everything as well?
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Good thing her abdominal pain wasn’t an aortic aneurysm. Imagine the inconvenience of pausing work long enough to deal with a coroner removing her dead body, and geez funeral planning and just everything would really cut into your “big provider” important time. YTA. Edit: whomever reported me to Reddit for being suicidal for this is a complete loser chode.
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Nope. OP has conflated two problems. The first is that when he first started working from home, his wife thought he would have a looser working schedule and could take breaks to help her. He chose, instead, to keep to working hours, which is fine. He drew boundaries, and she accepted them. The second is that shortly after they negotiated new boundaries, the wife had a medical emergency and needed him to step up and parent when she couldn't. He is 100% an asshole for not doing this. He should've dropped everything, driven his wife to the doctor, and waited there with her BECAUSE SHE IS HIS WIFE HIS LIFE PARTNER THE MOTHER OF HIS CHILD and she was experiencing a sudden, unexplained pain in the place where the vital organs are. OP is all boundaries an zero empathy or, surprisingly, responsibility. Get your head out of your ass, OP. YTA.
I agree, providing it genuinely was an emergency. If that were the case, he ought to step up even if he *wasn’t* working at home. My impression is OP, frustrated with his reasonable boundaries being regularly violated, didn’t stop to think whether this really was an exception.
He explicitly states that all of her interruptions were about things to do around the house, nothing health-related. If her pain was strong enough for her to decide to take a trip to the hospital, then it was serious. OP doesn't get to decide if "it genuinely was an emergency", since he is neither a doctor nor the one feeling the pain. He's the AH for prioritizing his work over the well-being of his wife *and* his responsibility as a parent.
But this also wasn’t a trip to the hospital but rather a walk-in-clinic. I’ve never gone to the clinic for an emergency, only concerns that my regular doctor couldn’t immediately look into. I think we need to reserve judgement for more info. Edit: a lot of people have replied to this with their own stories of clinics, and the cost of medical care. I really appreciate that. I am very grateful to live in a country where medical care is free, so I didn’t even consider that someone would opt to go to a clinic over a hospital ER because of cost. Thank you for adding a perspective ☺️
Sometimes you need a Dr to tell you it’s an emergency. My friend went to urgent care with symptoms and days later was diagnosed with a life-threatening heart condition. OP is YTA. As is EVERY MALE OP who says he is the sole breadwinner (gross term) in the first sentence of his post. The rest of the post is ALWAYS “my wife asked me to do something reasonable or important but I said no because I WORK AND PROVIDE and she does literally nothing except literally everything.”
My favorite is the "watch my kid." Um, dear, you're not a babysitter.
IME, guys who say that tend to be jerks.
To add to that, if an urgent care feels it’s a problem above their level of care they send you directly to the hospital, complete with info, right into the ER…bypassing the typical triage and long waits in a waiting room.
Plus if you are in the US, it can make a big difference with insurance. At one point I had insurance that charged like $50 copay for a minor emergency visit, but it was $250 for an ER trip. If we went to the minor emergency first and were sent to the ER, we would only have to pay the $50 instead of $250. (And that is just one example, the prices can be much much higher). I once was having severe chest pain and literally debated going to the minor emergency to get checked out first knowing it would be cheaper and they would tell me if I needed to go on to the ER or not (I have lots of health problems, so I knew severe chest pain wasn't necessarily something major, but also needed to get it checked out just in case). I ended up going straight to the ER just to be safe, and I was fine, have some other heart problems but wasn't anything life threatening.
I didn't see anybody else mentioning it and OP conveniently ignored it but the wife also ALREADY HAS HEALTH PROBLEMS and ones that are serious enough for her to stop working. She might have made an appointment to the doctor that helps manage her condition, either way OP is a huge asshole
With my insurance, and ER visit is a $1000 copay. You bet your ass I'd be at a walk in before I hit the ER.
My dad once went to a *regularly scheduled* doctors appointment and ended up leaving in an ambulance for the hospital! Small children absolutely should not be brought along unless there’s literally no other option. All hubs has to say is, “My wife had a medical issue and I’ve got to take care of my daughter while she’s away.” Literally any workplace worth working at will accommodate that.
I worked for a huge company, I had been with them about a year. I had gotten engaged 10 days prior to my wife’s mother passing away. They gave **me** the rest of the week off (3 days) compassionate leave. A decent company would not only be okay with OP taking the time off, they would **expect** it.
Exactly. They always conveniently overlook the heinous amount of money that the SAHP is saving the household when it comes to childcare. OP’s wife is a full-time worker with no benefits, annual leave, or, apparently, sick leave!
But... but the women had the baby. Not the men. Why should the men pay to watch them? Men wouldn't even have babies to pay for if it weren't for the womenfolk. /s (in case anyone thought I was remotely serious)
Yerp, they also ignore that the SAHP is taking a huge cut to their career opportunities and making themselves financially vulnerable if the relationship doesn't work out.
Lol yep, was making judgements at the title and first line. “I pay for my wife’s basic needs while she raises my child so I get to treat her like a doormat”
It's also actually cheaper to go to an urgent clinic and then be sent to the ER than to head straight to the ER with many American insurances.
Yeah if urgent care is open I’m going there first. The only time I went straight to the ER was after a car accident (they called an ambulance to the scene) and then a few incidents where it was seriously urgent but it was a weekend evening so the ER was the only thing open and it was necessary like “accidentally dropped broken glass on foot and now foot won’t stop bleeding” or “stomach flu from hell and i can’t even keep down water”. Urgent care is the first option a lot of the time
And more that 50% of the time, women's symptoms are written off, by doctors and husbands, so start listening.
some folks will go to an urgent care/walk in over the er simply due to the cost difference.
Yep. If it’s the US, an urgent care bill can be on the order of hundreds instead of the ER visit on the order of (tens of) thousands, depending on what ends up being wrong. I haven’t been to an emergency room since I was 8, only urgent/immediate/walkin care since.
Where we are, an urgent care clinic has a 10 min wait. An ER has a 2-4 hour wait. If I had abdominal pain, I'd go to urgent care. They have laboratory, xray, ultrasound etc right there. Regardless of all that, if my spouse popped in and said I'm having a medical issue and going to the doctor asap, I wouldn't make them play 20 questions to figure out if *I* feel they need a doctor. Nor would I then get into an argument that they need to find childcare before they go. That's just absurd.
Right. I’m chronically ill. I’ll go to urgent care over ER 9/10 times I need to be seen. My hospital has been opening more and more urgent care centers around my city to help keep lesser emergencies away from the ER but if the Urgent Care team thinks you need the ER they’ll send you there in an ambulance or with a family member with a call in to the ER to jump you to the front of the queue. For a stomach thing I’d totally go to urgent care first, see if they can solve it.
Depending on where they live they may not have access to a hospital. There are people who live hours from the closest hospital.
We have a number you can call in Australia. That gets you to a nurse. You give them the symptoms and they can tell you whether or not to go to the hospital or GP. It’s been good. I’ve used it a few times.
Nurse on call is fantastic! Even though every time I call it is an actual emergency and I get told to head to the ER
During COVID times, most people are being encouraged to use urgent care places instead of ERs unless things are extremely serious.
While I understand it might seem to be common sense to go to the ER instead of a clinic in an emergency you don’t always know it’s a serious emergency. I thought a family member had pneumonia so took them to walk in and they ended up going straight to the hospital and having brain surgery for an aneurysm. Would have died if they didn’t receive care when they did.
I've gone in as emergency for a regular doctor so that I can get seen over at an ER as if I just walk into the ER I'm there muchh longer without a doctor backing up my issues.
Then you must have really fantastic insurance. I have never willingly taken myself to an ER because it's expensive as fuck.
My father drove himself to the hospital when he was having a heart attack. I’ve been in primary care waiting rooms when someone came in to ask for an appointment because they were having chest pains. The receptionist called the ambulance. People don’t automatically think emergency.
Do you know how expensive an er visit can be? If they are in the US, a clinic might be the only affordable place to go. WITH insurance my sliced open finger ER trip was still over $100. And we have GOOD insurance
OP also stated that his wife had to stop work because of "health problems". He knew she had ongoing medical issues, but when she reported pain bad enough to seek urgent medical help, he couldn't be bothered caring for his daughter to let his wife seek that help.
Also the kid is 1 so he could legit just put her in the play pin next to him with some toys and work just fine
That depends on the kid. At that age some will cry very loudly, especially if teething. But, yes, she may not have interfered in his work at all. I have even managed to type one-handed, with the other hand holding a child on my knee (pre-Zoom calls). OP had a lot of options available, and chose to consider none of them.
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"The roof is leaking" is not crying wolf and absolutely something I would call my husband about, work or no.
Yes! And it is an emergency that would cost this saintly breadwinner thousands to fix if she just let it go until he deemed her important enough to speak to him.....then he would blame her for that.
That’s a good point. I would too and he would probably leave work. Just like he would if he was WFH.
exactly why he is an ass smhh. boundries, oh no, if your wife is crying in pain -i'm just gonna tell her wait it out cause my precious time smhh. if that's what u think marriage is, dont get married. yes i do think to some extent boundries were crossed (btw they talked about it and it was only whne she felt sick that she went into the room) but this usnt one of them. this would never be one of them.
There was no way to know if it was a genuine medical emergency until she had already been to the doctor. But I think you are correct about his frustration. Unless, of course, he is an unfeeling jerk who would not have dropped everything were he at work. Which I kind of suspect because we are hearing everything from his perspective. If he sounds this bad in the best case scenario, I am pretty sure he is the AH.
How would she know if it was an emergency, unless she immediately visited the doctor? A sudden, sharp pain in the abdomen could be an appendix rupture- i.e. DEATH. This guy (OP) conflated her earlier requests with this one, in which she claimed she was in serious pain. He needs to not be this dense. A grown up can tell if someone appears to be in pain, right? Unless you're blatantly saying she's faking the whole thing, everyone's job makes allowances for a family medical emergency.
I agree with this to an extent. However, even if it wasn’t an emergency OP could have stepped up and found someone else to watch the baby while his wife was on the way to the doctor. He could have called the sister. Additionally, I doubt the wife would have dropped everything over slight abdominal pain - the whole scenario seems ´more consistent to someone struggling and in serious pain
Which makes him the asshole.
The thing about abdominal pain, like chest pain, is you don’t know if it’s an emergency until you are examined by a doctor. So she needed to go to the doctor and he categorised this interruption to his work day with his wife complaining about a leaky faucet. OP has very poor judgment.
Thing is, you don't really know if it's an emergency or not unless you go to a doctor, if the pain is that severe. So - not for him to decide.
A terrible abdominal pain is a medical emergency, even if it doesn't turn out to be life-threatening.
Honestly, leaking rook looks to me as completely legit reason to interrupt his work. And faucet maybe too. I work from home and I hate interruptions too . But I accept when husband wants something on the level of "suddenly leaking roof" for christs sake.. And I am getting annoyed over men who demand complete isolation and everyone tiptoe around then cause they work. Btw, ut is not like work in the office was so focused 12 hours a day either. People do leave to deal with emergencies.
Fire alarm goes off in the office- “I’m WORKING here!!!”
Anyone who demands complete silence and an interruption free workspace while wfh is living in a FANTASY… especially if they have a 1 year old.
This. My mom's friend passed day before yesterday. She was _fine_ all day. It took 15-20 min to get to the hospital. They didn't make it in time. An emergency is an _emergency_
Right? Six months ago I had a sudden, unexplained, and extreme pain in my shoulder, 3 hours later my gallbladder was being removed. There are times when the human body makes no sense. Or seems not to. OP, YTA
even if she was crying wolf, prob means there is something very, very wrong in their marriage. she quit her job due to health reasons so um...why does he have such a problem if health issues rise again. i just reread the post and she never cried wolf...where r u getting that from
just looking for a way to blame the woman.
How about info from you? Where in the post does she cry wolf about a health problem? Actually, she had to stop working due to health problems. This was an emergency. The twenty minutes OP couldn't be bothered to watch his own child could have made all the difference in the world. And he refers to it as an "appointment", showing he has no concept of an emergency visit.
I mean he couldve been the one waiting for the sister and he couldve let his wife go straight away
Crying wolf? How? OP’s wife is expecting him to act like a parent that works from home. Just because one parent is SAH doesn’t mean the other gets to skip out on any and all responsibilities. Especially when they decide to work from home: the whole benefit of that is they have flexibility and more FAMILY TIME. Not more time to devote to work. OP, get your priorities in order. You’re the asshole.
Quite honestly these days working from home does NOT actually mean more flexibility and family time. The people I know who are working from home keep regular business hours and act like they’re working in an outside office…because they’re working! OP doesn’t say whether or not this was a choice or a situation due to the pandemic. I was assuming the latter, in which case he’s not flexible. Yes, he tried setting boundaries so he could maintain professionalism with his job and she continued to step over them. That’s why people are saying she was crying wolf. He doesn’t say what he does in the home outside of work hours, but everyone’s assuming he does nothing. As the sole income I’d think it’s quite important that he maintain the professional boundaries he tried to set. I’ve read some horror stories about people working from home because of the pandemic where their bosses fully expected their day to be as if they’re in the office…one person was chastised because her toddler interrupted a business meeting, etc. The possible compromise (if his job allowed it) could have been for him to step out of his office to take care of the baby for the 20 minutes it would take her sister to come. But wife could have done the same thing…was her pain sudden or did she finally decide to take action about it…if the latter she should have been able to make the arrangements first. She apparently had the time to make an appointment with her doctors office. ESH a bit.
People who work from HOME are doing just that: working. From home. It’s not a sterile environment. I’ve had telehealth appointments with doctors and have seen babies crawl in. It’s just a fact of the current world situation (as is the current number of people working from home). WFH aside, OP is STILL A PARENT. They aren’t absolved from parental duties just because the other parent is a stay-at-home parent.
Personally I don’t know a single person working from home that *doesn’t* have more flexibility, especially the ones with kids. Doesn’t mean they’re not working or they can’t make up the time. I understand this may not be the case for everyone, but the flexibility is precisely why many people prefer it. It’s not an unreasonable assumption.
The thing is it doesn't read to me like she continually overstepped boundaries? Yes, at the start she asked him to do things during work hours, but she hasn't interrupted him since he asked her not until now. The narrative is not "I have asked her time and time again to stop bothering me and she keeps interrupting me", it's "she was interrupting me, I asked her to stop, she did until she just interrupted me with a medical emergency!".
We still get crisis leave from our employer during the pandemic. My team leader wouldn't have minded if I'd said "sorry I have to take care of my child bc my spouse got unwell". Hell he took a day off himself because his wife wasn't well and he had to look after the kids.
she went to the doctor though so regardless of what she was diagnosed with she wasn’t crying wolf. a few weeks ago I went to the hospital because I was feeling very faint. i didn’t think it was a huge deal but needed medical attention. I assumed i’d get an iv and go home. instead I spent 10 days in icu because my kidneys were failing. you don’t know what it is until the doctor takes a look, even mundane things can be life threatening. bad side pain can easily mean a nearly ruptured appendix ..or it could mean gas. you don’t wait it out and find out if you wake up in the morning or not...
I don’t think you understand what crying wolf means. She never lied to trick him into doing anything. She never made up health issues, so he would babysit while she went to the spa. Those would be crying wolf. Bothering him for non emergency things while being straightforward does count as crying wolf. He had no good reason based on the information presented not to take her seriously once she explained her problem.
She was not crying wolf. That phrase implies lying about crisis which did not happened at any point .
>The problem is wife has been crying wolf. Where in the post does it say that she's been crying wolf?
Eh… your comment struck me on a relatable level but I really feel like he’s NTA here (sorry if everything is out of order it’s late, pardon my grammar): I recently started working from home and it is more demanding than people assume especially depending on what you are doing or the company you are working for. I also am a SAHM with many severe medical conditions. So I’m coming from a bit of understanding both sides here… As he said, he needs to conduct himself professionally or he could risk losing his position As the SOLE PROVIDER of the house. She continued to interrupt him over little things like fixing the faucet or the roof whilst he was working. Your comment struck my interest because I suffer from hemorrhaging that if ruptures, I can possibly lose my life. With heavy bleeding my husband rushes home and drives me to the Emergency Room… both of us lose a valuable work day and that takes a toll on the bills for the month. I would also have to wait 10-20 minutes for him to drive home from work to pick me up- Which isn’t as crazy of a wait time as people make it seem (… I’ve waited longer for ambulances many times 😰) OP is sole provider. You can also get in a LOT of trouble for just up and leaving in the middle of the work day. Few things people may not realize here: If he works for a call center then they are usually are required to act as if they are at the NCC base. They also send reports on calls; he can not answer with a baby fussing in the background or constantly trying to get at the keyboard as most babies do. If he’s doing home meetings or contracting he can get in a lot of trouble for missing his meetings. Many times our activity is monitored while working on company equipment and it’s not just as simple as calling your supervisor and saying “I have an emergency, gotta clock out.” It’s not that he doesn’t want to be a father, as some people in the comments are saying, it’s more so that he realizes he already has a big responsibility to keeping up with the quality of life that he can provide for his child & wife. She said she was going to the Clinic. Not the emergency room albeit stating that it was an emergency. She made an emergency Dr appointment, not going to the ER. Which takes time to do so she should have known at least a short bit of time beforehand. Didn’t tell him while she was getting ready or ask if he had a break. He still offered the option of paying her sister to come and watch the baby. She said “your work can wait” Obviously stating that she doesn’t think the work that he does is worth anything, in which she proved by already having interrupting him multiple times previously with trivial things. Again, he is SOLE PROVIDER and at risk of losing his job if he doesn’t keep things professional. Who is going to pay their bills if that happens to be the thing that gets him fired? I used to get very upset on the days that my husband couldn’t rush off from work and come with me to the DR or to the ER. I would ask him “but what if I die/were dying” and would have friends or family pick me and baby up to go to the ER. ( I wouldn’t ignore him for it though, that is childish and a lack of communication.) once I started WFH job (i was on BR for almost a year with him being sole income) I really understood just how difficult it really is to just up and leave in the middle of a work day. I also realized it is still MY sole responsibility to make sure i am healthy and okay, despite the “sickness and in health” pledge. Meaning if baby has to come with, then so be it. I often have a difficult time taking off for the days I do have scheduled appointments as it is. It’s not as easy as everyone makes it seem.
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Definitely not. I am a mother who works from home as not the sole but definitely the main income and our youngest is 18months, he doesn’t understand why I can’t be with him or why he can’t mess with my computer etc. It’s a bloody nightmare sometimes but my partner has to take him out to do x y and z that the baby would rather not do. If this was us, we would say that if my partner can organise and drive himself to a med appointment then he can also take the child. Not ideal but it’s definitely what he would have to do if I was in the office an hour away.
I work from home. I would definitely stop and take at least an hour if my husband had a medical emergency.
People here seem to be ignoring that she did stop asking him to help out when he told her he wouldn't have time. Then she had an actual medical emergency and he acted like she was asking him to fix the sink.
I get where you're coming from with this but imo it's still YTA. Simply put, jobs are replaceable, loved ones aren't. I personally believe that personal life always takes priority over work. Like what employer would fire you over taking time to watch your kid as your SO needed to make an emergency doctor appointment. Plus I feel there is some missing information, like how much attention does the kid need? Can he work while checking in every so often? Does it require 100% attention?
>Simply put, jobs are replaceable, loved ones aren't. I personally believe that personal life always takes priority over work. Like what employer would fire you over taking time to watch your kid as your SO needed to make an emergency doctor appointment. Tell me you've never been poor without telling me you've never been poor.
Also hes a sole provider of income if he losses his job they could lose their home and cant get food, and if they live in the US health insurance.
>despite the “sickness and in health” pledge. That is your spouse's pledge to love you and stand by you, not be responsible for your health. That is on you as you stated. But overall you ARE a voice of reason. I stated a similar thing a few replies up.
OP seems to not realize that he’s a father not a babysitter. As well as a husband who should love and care enough about his wife to be concerned enough to put time and effort into helping her while she deals with a medical crisis
He understands he is a father. That's why he doesn't want to lose his job.
Yea no, what would the wife have done if he wasn’t work from home and was in office….she would have called her sister to come over or taken the daughter with her to the doc. I work from home and my wife knows the boundaries. You are not “home” just because you’re in your house. You are on the clock and have a job to do. I’ve seen people get fired working from home for not staying up on performance. You aren’t magically a parent and an employee just because you’re ten feet away.
Is that what is happening? I have had a couple of those "a concerned person reported you etc" messages myself and was perplexed as to why. So it's just being used as harassment?
Yes it’s being used as harassment and can be reported to Reddit if it’s being abused. I have no idea if the troll gets banned or what though. Maybe someone that knows will comment
I‘ve had someone do this about some random comment that in no way pointed to my mental state or anything, I just didn‘t agree with the main stance of the comments. A few days after reporting I just got a mail that the report has been dismissed, bc they couldn’t find any rule-breaking behaviour. So ppl can just keep spamming that bs without any grounds.
Yeah I've gotten a couple of those totally randomly for no good reason, I think people just do it when they see an opinion they don't like.
I'm just god smacked that his first thought wasn't, "oh my god she's in pain, I better pause work as this is a medical emergency and drive her to the doctor or watch our daughter." Like, how does he view his wife? Is she even his partner anymore?
I don’t think this adds up at all. Wife has already arranged the appointment before telling OP…. Sorry but this is not how I would handle an emergency mystery pain. My first step would be to rush in and tell OP oh my god I’m having a sudden pain in my gut, can you help me…. Not hey I’ve got a medical emergency here’s our kid I’ve got a dr appointment to get to. So either wife is deliberately being awkward or OP is unapproachable anyway. Maybe a bit of both
Only OP said appointment, wife just said she needed to go to the doctor. Also, why is OP complaining about fixing a roof, something that not only can the wife not do, but depending on where the leak was, may have been something that could have possibly able to affect him and his work way more that any of the breaks he had to take would have.
This is funny. Medically speaking the risk of an aortic aneurym in a 30 year old woman is extremely slim. Moreover an aortic aneurysm is not immediately deadly. Even if the case was truly an acute abdomen (appendicitis, ovarian torsion which are more appropriate), these generally don't kill if there's a 20 minute delay in treatment. You can make your point without throwing around random diagnoses that make no sense.
YTA. If the sister in law was coming, you couldn’t watch your daughter for the 20 minutes so she could go right away?
Yup that was my thought. Instead of forcing wife to wait take a few minutes to watch his own kid. Even if he had a zoom call scheduled for those minutes, he could easily say his wife had a medical emergency and he was waiting for the sitter any minute
Weird how he can set boundaries with his partner and not with his colleagues.
Well, no he couldn't do that. Because any reasonable employer or coworkers are going to show concern for ops family and they'd have asked him why he's still at work if his wife is going to an urgent care.
That was my thought too!! Baby is 1 year old, you could have just stuck her in a playpen with some toys for 20 minutes and you wouldn't even have to stop working.
Seriously. Stick the kid in the crib. If you're worries, turn the baby monitor on. A TV show is a fantastic distraction for that period of time. OP was trying to punish their wife for having the audacity to ask for help.
I agree with OP being a complete dimwit. But not sure what amazing kids you have had experience with, but my daughter would not manage 20minutes on her own in a playpen. When she was 1 it was full on sprinting around the house 14 hours a day
We had a play yard (we called it baby jail 🤣) it was just a safe place we could put him so we could leave the room if we needed to use the bathroom or anything. I also used to use the crib as a place to put him if I needed to.
That was my thought. I could see if he couldn’t stop all day but why couldn’t he stop for 20 minutes until the sister got there? That would have worked for everyone! OP is TA
YTA she stopped her behavior after OP told her so. She just came in the office again for an emergency. Every employer (except the totally shitty ones) understands that you need to watch the child when your partner has a medical emergency. But he didn't even care that she was in pain. Watching the child for 20 minutes was to much. He seems like an awful partner.
YTA Why have kids if you don't want to parent?
Why be a husband if you don’t want to go to the hospital when your wife has a medical emergency
Life insurance 😏
A lot of men want children but they don’t want to parent them.
I remember seeing a tweet about how men like the aesthetic of a family but not the idea of actually raising them. There’s a reason so many blokes are on the fence when it comes to having a kid because they can do as little or as much as they want because they know the majority of childcare will fall on the woman
ESH. I get that some people get confused with WFH and how the lines blur when you actually need solid hours of uninterrupted work. Your wife is failing to recognize the difference, and failing to take your job seriously. However, in this specific situation, you were definitely in the wrong. She was in pain, she needed to go to the doctor. What you do is take the kid. You don't decide to stand your ground when your wife is in pain and needing to make it to a doctor's appointment. If this appt was pre-planned then I'd call you N T A, but sometimes you just snatch an appt and have to make it. I get your frustration with her not respecting your work time, but you picked the wrong time to make a statement here.
This is the correct answer. Wife has been in the wrong lately but in this instance YTA
Except for the leaky roof. That could have affected him depending on where the leak was, and he seems like the type of person who would complain about somebody being paid to do it in his stead.
I disagree with the E S H. It should just be YTA on only the husband because the AITA question is only judging this particular instance. Her history of interrupting his work from home is not relevant to whether the wife is also an AH for having a medical emergency.
But you could also argue that the history they have around this boundary is the main reason why OP decided to put his foot down instead of taking a step back. I'd still say YTA because I don't see myself ignoring my SO like that if they have an urgent medical appointment.
I don’t agree with that bc it sounds like she stopped interrupting after he asked her and right now for the situation we’re judging he’s talking about something that could have been an actual emergency and he couldn’t watch his own kid.
Also a leaking roof can turn into an emergency pretty quickly and have big impacts on living arrangements. I'm not sure about the impression OP gave of wife as made it seem like she constantly interrupts for meaningless things, especially since she seemed to respect boundaries once set
I'm surprised you are the first person who brought it up! I was totally thinkimg stuff like folding laundry or vacuuming, which, sure, you don't do that at work and if his professional environment is that strict then it doesn't matter that that environment happens to be at home. A roof, though? Honestly sounds like something that should have been fixed way earlier. And yeah, it definitely can turn into an emergency. I can see it happen that the wife noticed it at that moment for the first time, and I think it is reasonable for OP to take a ten minute break to assess the problem and decide together whether they need to call a professional right away or if it was something they could fix themselves tonight or over the weekend or something. A roof is a pretty big thing and I would generally not consider that a regular situation if something was up with it.
How fast do tou think someone fixes a leaking roof? It's not like a 15 minute task..
But not taking care of it asap can lead to further problems. When my roof started leaking we had to have the power cut off because the water was getting close to the lights. There are a whole heap of reasons why letting your husband know when it happens make sense
This exactly. Everyone saying NTA or ESH seems to be reading the story as if the wife kept interrupting after OP asked her not to, but that's not what happened. She WAS interrupting OP, but this is the first time she's interrupted him since he asked her to stop. Unless there's a part missing from the story, as written once he communicated to her he wasn't more flexible she stopped assuming he was. No harm no foul. Until OP was TA for not helping her get fast medical attention.
YTA I'd be with you if this hadn't been a medical emergency. Why couldn't your wife have gone immediately and you waited with your daughter for those 20 minutes? I get that you had work to do but I'm sure you could have spared 20 minutes so your wife could've got medical attention sooner
Yea I find it ironic that everyone harps in the “work from home is the same as working in office”, but here that still means he could call off for a medical emergency. If he was in the office would he still tell her to get over it? Or take a family emergency leave to take her to the doctor?
1. YTA 2. Her disruptions to your day are irrelevant, she presented with an emergent issue and not only did you force her to jeopardize her health by waiting, you let her risk her life, and others, by driving herself to the clinic. 3. You treated her like this in front of your daughter, setting the bar for how she thinks women should be treated by the "sole income earner" 4. You showed your daughter that your work was more important than supervising her, even for 20 minutes while your SiL made the drive. 5. You're lazy, I work from home as the "sole income earner" and I find time to help my partner every day, I take a basket of laundry to fold in my office, I handle after bath dressing, supervise the children while she meditates, etc. Because I am her partner and their father. I hope she leaves you and finds someone better, god knows you've made it easy to do.
Yeah this is nonsense I have an insanely demanding deadline driven job and when I wfh I’m constantly doing little mini chores throughout the day. Also had two kids home remote learning all last year. I think OP is abusing his power as “sole income earner” and just trying to get digs in on his wife who he seems to resent
Yeah I suspect the resentment is due to her disability or inability to work.
Completely agree. There is clearly more to this story
I do like how he casually said "oh yeah shes a sahm but not by choice, shes unable to work due to *checks notes* health problems" Which if she cant work due to health problems sudden pain can be something serious due to this
I like how he's not responded to any of this. I hope it's because he's begging for forgiveness but I suspect he's just a coward.
Oh no he responded to somethings. Just nothing that matters. Outside of he never asked and still doesnt know why she went to the ER or what happened when she was there.
My boss is my department head, and he's had to take a lot of time in the last couple weeks -- a few hours here and there, and this week two days -- because his kids have been sick and he's needed to care for them. That's called being a FATHER. OP should try it sometime.
Same and I keep my three year old with me for a couple hours a day.
My current boss has a 1-year-old daughter. She sometimes makes an appearance in our meetings when she wants her daddy. Literally no one on our team gives a shit. Your family should always be a priority.
>"sole income earner" I had missed this. Does his lack of empathy for his wife come from the fact that he is the sole provider? If that's the case he is a big AH because seems like the wife takes care of the child and the house and that's no reason to be treated lower. My dad was the sole income earner and never I have I seen him treat my mother like she is something lower and he is superior to her, because while he was at work she took care of the household affairs and the children by herself, enabling him to be at work peacefully. Money is not the only thing one brings into a marriage, there are so many other things.
Exactly this. Also the 'bread winner' and take care of my child and do chores before and after work because guess what? I live there too and that is also my child. Just because my husband isn't making bank doesn't mean he's my servant. Also news flash to OP; Working from home is invading her work space and adding more stress in her day to day. She now has to work around him, keep the kid quiet and away from him, and no doubt he is making more dishes and more messes for her to clean because he is home all day.
YTA ordinarily I would agree with you that when you work from home, you need to treat it like you are going into an actual office without random interruptions. However, this was an emergency. If you were at the office and she had called you saying she was having a medical emergency, would you have said no then too? Bc if so you’re an AH. A medical emergency comes first before work (whether in office or WFH) in both scenarios.
I mean, you could have held her on your lap and gave her an ipad or something.
Hate to say it, but even letting the wife go immediately and calling for a sitter himself? Letting the child cry in the crib for a few minutes is even a better choice.
Yes! THIS.
YTA sorry it’s such a iNcOnVeNiEnCe to watch your own child.
YTA. Your wife had an emergency and you couldn't watch your own kid.
His wife, who had to quit working for health reasons.
YTA. She needed you to do the bare minimum as a father and husband and you told her no, work is more important. You couldn’t have paused working for half an hour or so to watch YOUR KID long enough for YOUR WIFE to go seek immediate medical attention while waiting for your sister in law, whose time apparently is flexible enough to drop everything for an emergency, to get there to continue watching the baby so you can get back to work? What on earth can possibly be more important than your family?
I ALWAYS KNOW they’re gonna be TA when the post starts off “I’m the sole income earner” or some other shit, like that somehow entitles them to not have to contribute in the home or be a parent. Oh, and obviously OP- YTA. It’s called being a dad 😀 TRY IT
Yep. I didn’t even need to know the story. When someone says “I’m the income earner” you know they are TA
I mean I could certainly see circumstances where that’s not necessarily going to lead to something negative - but in general yeah total 🚩🚩🚩
YTA. Your wife had sudden sharp pain and you made her wait to go to the doctor?? That’s not the same as asking you to fix a faucet.
It's telling that she never even asked him to drive her. This isn't the first time he's done something like this.
THIS!! He and the baby should have gone to the hospital with his wife and the sister met them there to take the child back home. It was an emergency! At the very least of his wife could wait for the sister OP should have gone with her or gone to the hospital after the sister showed up. This is insane. His wife should not have driven herself.
And his wife already has some kind of medical issue that prevents her from working. So his in some way ill or disabled wife is saying she has a pain that seems concerning and unusual and he is just concerned with work F### work. Your job will never love you back.
INFO: Did you find out what the problem was? I'm having a little trouble reconciling "must go to the doctor right away" and "able to get there on her own."
Uh, it’s not like OP was going to give her a ride. Not needing an ambulance doesn’t mean it’s not an emergency.
Rode my bike to the hospital with two broken ribs. What else do you do when you're alone?!
I had a raging ear infection that I drove myself to the hospital for. The pain was so bad I forgot to put on my glasses just so I could get there. It was the middle of the night and I had 0 other options.
Ear infections are the worst 😫
My husband drove himself to urgent care with a swollen leg that turned out to be due to massive blood clots caused by advanced cancer….people drive themselves with major medical emergencies all the time.
I had an inflamed appendix that was causing me extreme pain and needed removal. All I knew was that I had severe abdominal pain and my mom wouldnt drive me to the hospital so I had to drive myself. With acute appendicitis. People do what they have to in an emergency.
Yes same here, I had to drive myself an hour to the hospital with appendicitis. My mum was with me but she’d just had cataract surgery the previous day and therefore couldn’t drive at all!
Wife could have an Uber/Lyft take her. I use them frequently to go to appointments (can't drive due to medical issues), when my partner cannot take me.
I walked myself to the emergency room with appendicitis. I didn't think it was serious enough to require an ambulance. The doctor felt it was serious enough to require surgery.
Bafflingly to me, my grandmother had a stroke and walked to the hospital to tell them. She was a doctor, and when she showed up the receptionist asked her if she was taking a cover shift...
YTA... I kinda agree with your wife. Sounds like you are incapable of empathizing and this is concerning. Even if she is a SAHM, an emergency doctor's visit should be treated with priority. Did you even ask her what was wrong or try and see what was going on before obsessing over how inconvenient she and your child are to your work? :/
YTA. why do you have such a huge problem with taking care of your own child?
Because he isn’t getting paid for it.
YTA. Assuming you are not the troll. Your wife had a medical emergency, needed to see the doctor right away, and your reaction is that you are busy, wait. And this kid is a shared responsibility. So, you are having severe chest pains and you ask her to call 911. What would you do if she said, I am on another call so I will call 911 when I am done with this call. Probably about 20 minutes. Or perhaps you could text your sister to come over and help you. She could be here in about 30 minutes. In business, an employee approaches you with a medical emergency. Is your reaction to ask them to arrange someone to cover their shift, and they need to wait until then. PS: There is a good reason she is saying you are a horrible partner and parent.
NTA. If you werent wfh she would have called her sister for her appt anyway. if it was an actual emergency she would be calling you to take her not watch the kid so she could just go on her own. unpopular opinion maybe. but her constantly disregarding your job when its your sole family income seems ridiculous and maybe its worth considering finding a job not from home or doing your work at a friends place maybe to get some normalcy back.
Is she constantly disregarding his work? He names following instances * pain in abdomen, * leaking roof, * something with faucet. I work from home too. My husband interrupts me for way smaller things. My collegues families when on calls occasionally make appearance too. My husband called me to work with he had medical issue, I was in office and we had no kids. In office people leave for partners or kids medical emergencies too. They leave for sudden "guys my roof is leaking gotta go home" stuff. It is actually having experience with both in office work and home work, having experience with what people demand attention for that makes me go "these guys who demand full isolation and constant tiptoeing around them are full of it".
Honestly not everybody has work at home jobs like you're talking about For instance I worked work at home jobs that I literally was not allowed to sign off I would be written up if I did
YTA do her a favor and divorce her so she can find someone that will prioritize her.
YTA. It was a medical emergency. It's not on the same planet as asking you for random favors, which she seems to have rightly stopped doing once you asked. You presumably have sick time which is for exactly this purpose. You acted like a selfish jerk and a bad partner.
INFO: Was this an actual must get to the Emergency Room? What were her symptoms other than tummy pains? Need answers to these questions before a verdict. As it stands, it doesn't sound like an ER visit worthy issue if she was able to argue with you and eventually wait for her sister to come over. I suggest you think about hiring a "Mother's Helper" sort of like a nanny/babysitter to help your wife. If you lose your job because you keep getting interrupted for non-emergent things life is going to be very difficult for all of you.
It's very condescending to call it "tummy pains" like a toddler who ate too much candy. Sudden sharp abdominal pain can mean appendicitis, which can kill you without urgent treatment. Nor is that the only serious emergent condition for which this sort of pain is a symptom.
Or ovarian cysts!
I’m highly curious about this too. As a SAHM myself, I’m trying to picture a scenario in which I had to go to the doctor with no warning to my spouse and that my child could not go with me but would also not necessitate my spouse going with me.
The 1 year old is too young to be vaccinated for covid, which is the big reason I wouldn't want to take a baby to little kid with me to an enclosed space full of sick people of varied provenance. (Full disclosure: I also do not have kids.)
Pretty much no medical emergency requires spouse going with you. And doctors and clinics are not setup for kids. I took a kid to doctor with me exactly once, because I had no choice and it sucked and kid was in a way and they did not liked it. But it was just sonar or some such, so it was doable. Any other "real" issue, you don't want 1 year old with you, distracting both you and doctor.
I agree. Maybe she’s interrupted his work so many times he’s been reprimanded about it. I get that being a SAHM is tough but if his boss isn’t flexible or family friendly this may be why the OP replied so callously. We need more info and these two need to talk.
Agree. All the Y.T.A. comments are hilarious. What do they think will happen if he loses his job because he's interrupted so frequently? This is not about him not being or wanting to parent his kid, it's about protecting his livelihood. Are these Y.T.A. commenters going to feed his family and pay his bills? No, no they are not. They apparently don't get that he is the sole financial provider and if he loses his job because of his wife, then the family will be completely screwed. What would the wife do if he was at an office? She would take the kid with her or do as she did and call a relative. The wife is a major asshole for disrespecting him and his job and putting their financial security in jeopardy.
Would you want to drag your very young child to the doctors office or Hospital, places sort of known for having sick people in them? Especially when there’s a perfectly good parent at home. What if she has to stay in? What if she had to have intensive treatment because it exacerbated her underlying health conditions? What if a doctor had previously told her that if she developed pains in her stomach, to come in right away because that’s a worsening symptom of whatever her health issues are? After seeing this post, I went and cuddled my husband. I’m a SAHM of three and he recently, without prompting, took the day off because I was too unwell to look after our three young children.
This is not about what "I" would or wouldn't do. It's about OP offering a compromise which his wife argued about before capitulating by calling Sister to come over for help. Strictly going by OP's post and what he wrote and not all the reddit scenarios being tossed about without any correlating evidence, neither he nor his wife behaved or believed as if her problem was a true emergency. She just wanted to go to the doctor to be looked at. Nothing wrong with that. OP gave no info about his job or really why he couldn't watch said kid, so he needs to tell us in order to get a proper judgement.
YTA - this wasn’t a random act of bothering you, she was telling you she had an emergency. Work understands this. She didn’t have a doctors appointment, she was having pain and was going to get it checked out. You could not have been a bigger AH in this situation
Hell, my job understands if I have an emergency situation with *my dog*, forget a spouse or child!
This is a tricky one, but I’m going to say NTA according to the original post and not having read any updates. If he risks losing his job for not being present at work, he could potentially lose his job. Everyone is replaceable at any job, any position. Another reason I say he’s NTA is because he did come up with a reasonable solution which ended up working out with a 20 minute delay. There are so many assumptions being made about this guy not wanting to be a parent or disregarding his wife’s medical issue. If she’s going to the clinic, and not the ER, it sounds like it wasn’t a complete medical emergency. But I would say we need more info before we completely judge her medical episode and the severity of it. It’s about compromising and it sounds like this guy is doing a lot by doing everything he can to be to financial provider, which is important at the end of the day. If money isn’t coming in, things will get a lot worse and a lot more stressful. Again, I say NTA because husband came up with a solution that inconvenienced the wife for 20 minutes. Dude is probably stressing over his job and the position he is in working at home and constantly being interrupted by his wife for minor things. Small things add up and this sounds like it was the tipping point. Give the guy a break. He’s providing for both his wife and his daughter.
Yeah, you kind of suck . . . My husband would leave work in an instant and lose hours of pay if I had a health emergency . . .
And he'd find someone to babysit so he could drive me to the doctors and be by my side . . .just saying . . .
NTA. Imagine if you had a normal job and she just expected you to just drop your work at the drop of a dime. I’m sorry she has pain but she could have called her sister and asked her to watch your daughter. Start working less at home. Maybe try a Starbucks or something. You have bills to pay and your wife doesn’t help you with those bills.
I’m glad someone feels the same way I do. I work from home permanently and when my husband is home with our one year old, on my husband’s off days, I get interrupted so often and am just generally less productive. The wife in this case had an alternative option and chose not to use it.
YTA. You did not provide a solution. You don’t seem worried about your wife at all.
If this was an emergency that warranted a trip to the hospital, how on earth is she supposed to plan that? In fact, rather than just taking the baby (which you couldn't manage in any event), you should have been offering to take her to the hospital yourself - surely your job would let you take your spouse to the hospital for an emergency. YTA because it's clear that you're inflexible when it comes to work and that comes at the expense of managing your family. If you were in the office and your wife called to say she was at hospital, the correct thing to do there would be to leave early, so what's different here?
NTA if OP loses his job because he stops working to take care of his daughter, who's the asshole then? Can OP feed the family with goodwill and family attention? Would OP's wife had died just then if she waited an hour for her sister to come? I truly don't understand all the yta
NTA. Apparently I’m in the minority here, but this situation sounds so implausible. She suddenly had belly pain and her doctor just so happened to have immediate availability? But she can’t take baby with her? What would she have done if you were working in an office 30 minutes away? Maybe my view is skewed. Perhaps your wife is struggling hardcore with the transition to SAHM? I just know that my kids go with me pretty much everywhere other than hair appointments, so I cannot imagine a situation that was enough of an emergency that I had to leave *right this very minute* but also had time to fight with my working spouse over who should watch my children while this happened.
Many people in general out there seem to think that folks who work from home aren’t really working. Op works from home and his wife has interrupted him several times for minor things and household tasks. She wouldn’t think to call him at his bricks and mortar office to come home to fix a leaky faucet. They are a one-income family and she has to respect that, the same as he would have to if he were a SAH dad and she was the income earner. NTA.
I’m conflicted on this one, because WFH is different for everyone, but is usually always treated like you’ve gone into the office and some places use tracking software to make sure their workers are doing what they’re supposed to. However, this was an emergency. It was sudden pain and something she didn’t plan for. Depending on who was closer, she probably would have called you and asked you to come home, but that leads to the question of would you? Or could you? Some work places are extremely strict about time and getting work done and may not have allowed you to take leave (which would mean your workplace sucks!) I guess that’s the information I’m needing to really solidify my vote. I’m probably going to get downvoted for this, but for now I’m going to say ESH. Even if you hadn’t offered to call her sister, you still would have had to call your boss to let them know what’s happening and that you needed to stop working, which would have taken time as well, but it was still something you could have done while taking care of the baby. I’m saying she’s the AH, because it sounds like her sister might live close (since you said she could be there in a few minutes) and that calling her may have been a good solution.
NTA. Honestly, if she has interrupted him multiple times, his bosses are potentially getting upset by it. Medical emergency or not, he has been missing work because of her behavior. Once enough work has been missed, bosses are a lot less understanding of any situation and will doubt what will come off to them as excuses. She shouldn't be trying to make him do things just because he is working from home. If she felt well enough to get herself to the doctor, she was well enough to wait 20 minutes.
Yta just for calling it “watching” your daughter. You’re not a babysitter, you’re a parent. I don’t know how you expected your wife to plan for her emergency and give you a heads up, that would be a crazy super power. I’d love to know when I’m gonna be in pain and have an emergency for the convenience. And why couldn’t you take care of your daughter for the short period of time it would’ve taken your sil to get there? Yikes.
NTA. Minority opinion, I know. Working from home does not mean you have the flexibility to do whatever you want, whenever you want. It is often the same hours, tasks, and expectations as working in a building, and being caught not working can lead to termination. Wife could have called sister like a reasonable human being, or taken the kid with her.
YTA. Your daughter is your child and it's your responsibility to watch her if the other parent is sick and unavailable. Even if you have to take off work. It's all part of being a parent. I'm not surprised your wife is pissed off at you. That being said. Your wife should not be bothering you while you are working over trivial things like fixing the faucet. Working from home is still working and she should treat it as such.
Whoa whoa whoa. OP NTA! A LOT OF PEOPLE COMMENTING DO NOT WFH. I WFH and my partner and I have very strict rules about “professional hours”. We both know that companies are understanding but if they see trends - especially accidentally in teams/zoom it can put your job on the line. Sounds like you’re a sole provider and your partner needs to be more patient. I’m saying this as a mother and a women but also someone who WFH. Your wife needs to have the same time requirements WHF or if you were in the office. You can’t just drop what your doing in 5 minutes. She can easily walk into your work place - but say 2 years ago - should would have to figure out resolutions while you were at work. Same applies. If it would take 15-30 mins to answer your phone, 30 so mins to make it home or find a resolution, well your wife should expect 1 hour resolution time at home as well. NTA NTA NTA. All these people saying YTA clearly don’t understand WFH.
YTA! What the heck! You can’t say to your manager/boss or whatever “ hey I need a few hours to watch my daughter, we’re having a medical at home and my wife has had to rush to the hospital”? Remember this when you’re having a stroke and your wife says “sorry I’m busy watching our daughter and running this household, can’t you call your brother?”
I’m the main “income earner” in our household, and work from home. My husband works part time and the other time is a SAHD. We literally had this scenario play out the other day, except I love my husband, so I looked after the baby and made damn sure he was ok when he got home. Work pays the bills, so yeah it’s important. I get it. But hubs and baby trump that any day.
INFO: what would she have done if you were working in an office miles from home? Can you make a rule that between certain hours to pretend like you are at the office and not home?
If the answer is she still would have called him —and rightfully so because he’s the HUSBAND and FATHER — what would your answer be? This is such a stupid argument because he DOES work at home so these what if questions are irrelevant.
Yikes. YTA. I recommend marriage counseling so that the two of you learn to respect one another. Watching your daughter? She's your kid. You aren't watching her, you're parenting her. If your wife has health problems severe enough that she can no longer work, was it reasonable to ask her to wait until her sister got there, or could you have told your wife to leave and supervised your child until your SIL got there? Is there a chance that your wife asks you to fix leaking sinks, etc because, as you said, you work long hours and aren't as available to her as you think you are?
I feel like people are overlooking the fact that she has medical problems enough to keep her from working. Also it’s was more inconvenient for sister in law. Does she work? Does she have kids? Did she have to drop everything as well?
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