Hey all

I am really struggling right now and feeling like everybody in my life says they want my needs met...as long as their needs are met first. Willing to hear that ITA if that's the case, and if the below resonates with you, what strategies did you use to fix it.

Dad to a 1 year old and a 3 year old, both daughters. Until now, I have had a wonderful relationship with my wife. Amazing communication, good co-parenting, have never fought (disagree, yes, but always able to work things out), but things are starting to come off the wheels for the first time in 10 years.

I work an extremely stressful white collar job - very high income which is great for our family, but constant stress, deadlines and negotiations every day. Includes working for big chunks on weekends. On top of that, I make breakfast in the mornings, co-get the girls ready for school, join the family the second work ends, bath/showers, bedtime, and then at least an hour of chores after that.

My wife works at most 3 hours a day, and she doesn't have to work at all - she works for a passion project of hers, almost no stakes at all, low stress. Her day at most is from 8:30-11:30, then she can decide whether to take the day for herself or pick the girls up early from daycare. She does the bulk of the chores/parenting but from above schedule, I think you can see why that is.

On top of that, I am frequently stepping into to solo parent so she can do the things she wants. This is admittedly an extreme example, but FOUR nights this week I am doing bedtime solo so that she can engage in her hobbies. My wife will take the girls if I need to work, but it has easily been months since the last time she took the girls solo so that I could hang out with a friend or do a hobby on the weekend. I can fit some gym classes into my work week or do them at like 6am, that's it.

Come the weekend, I am being constantly admonished for being tired, disconnected, and not wanting to do extra chores. I come out of the work week completely destroyed, and on top of that usually will have at minimum 5-6 hours of work over the weekends, sometimes much more. My wife presents me with an entire schedule of family events for every minute of the weekend I'm not working, wants to tackle big extra chores during nap time, and now she also wants me to commit to several hours of church park afterwards on top of it. If I tell her I need some time to myself, she gets hurt or frustrated. If I do everything she wants 24/7, but am not super energetic, she gets hurt or frustrated. There is no winning. There is a lot of lip service about how "I should take care of myself more and do the things I want to do in life" but the reality is "as long as I get everything I need from you first".

She is constantly complaining how "90% of the chores/parenting fall on her" - without mentioning that 95% of the income falls on me and I never get thanked for it, and how every second I have off I am helping with kids/family/chores. None of the things you hear wives complain out, no NFL Sundays, no golf, no 3 hours a day playing Call of Duty, whatever. In terms of what she gains from my job, we are talking 50K on daycare alone, whatever she wants from Amazon, her dream neighborhood, whatever classes she wants for our kids, whatever crazy gadget she wants for our kids, house cleaner, landscaper, nice vacations, designer purses, and then a ton into savings on top of that including 60k-70k in our girls college funds already, she never acknowledges what it takes to achieve this and acts as if it is nothing and she is the only one pulling her weight.

I *want* to have energy for my family and kids. I don't want to blow them off. But I can't do this anymore. I am getting up at 5am now to have ONE hour to myself all day...watching sports games delayed hour by hour since I never get the chance to watch them live. By 6am, I am everybody else's until bedtime. But I feel as if I am painted as the bad guy all the time. I know she works hard too - parenting is tough! But as you can see from her job above, she can easily take several hours to herself each day if she wants to, and she refuses to see this. I don't want to fuck off for the entire weekend, but if I can't have some time to recharge how am I supposed to be energetic with the family time? I just want to watch a 49ers game once a week or skip one kids activity and go to the rest. It's not like I am asking for the entire weekend!

I am really struggling not to be resentful but I am hitting a boiling point. It is so hard to have no time to fulfill your own needs because you are sacrificing for everybody all the time, but then the story is that YOU are the one not pulling weight. WTF! When do I even have time to fuck somebody over?