Pregnant Wife Tells Husband He Can’t Be Frustrated—Is She Right?
A woman who is pregnant for the first time is wondering if she was wrong to tell her husband he’s not allowed to be frustrated
Pregnancy can be an exciting time for couples, but it can also be a challenging one. Women go through a lot of physical and emotional changes, and their partners need to be supportive and understanding. However, what happens when the roles are reversed? What if the husband is frustrated with the wife’s pregnancy symptoms? Is it fair to tell him he can’t be frustrated? This is the dilemma that a 25-year-old woman, who we’ll call “Jemma”, is facing with her 26-year-old husband.
The Story
Jemma and her husband are expecting their first child, and she has been experiencing severe cramping and nausea. Because they both work full time, they try to split the household tasks equally. However, when one of them has to work late, the other picks up the slack.
On this particular day, the husband asked if Jemma could bring the clean laundry up from the dryer in their basement. She replied that she couldn’t get it up the two flights of stairs and was planning to grab what she needed and leave the rest for later.
The husband was frustrated that she couldn’t grab all the laundry, so he didn’t have to go downstairs as well. This upset Jemma, and she told him that he didn’t have the right to be frustrated with her for having pregnancy symptoms and not being at 100% anymore.
The Dilemma
Jemma is now questioning whether she was in the wrong for telling her husband he couldn’t be frustrated with her.
She doesn’t want to make him feel like he can’t talk to her about how he’s feeling, but at the same time, she feels that he should be more understanding of her pregnancy symptoms.
She also finds it frustrating that he’s fine picking up the slack when she has to work late but hates it when it’s related to her pregnancy symptoms.
The Responses
Many responses said that Jemma was not in the wrong, however, she could sit down with her husband to talk about changing the division of labor around housework. “It might be time to have a conversation about dividing the workload differently since you’re pregnant,” one person said. “Or maybe you guys could divvy up chores in a way that lets you work on things that are easier for you to do. Like he can haul the laundry up all the stairs since that’s now harder for you to do, and you can cover chores that require limited movement.”
Others also weighed in on the situation. One person said, “Sit your spouse down and have a talk that he probably needs to do more because you physically cannot do everything you are used to. He needs to know you cannot do everything you are used to. And he needs to cut you some slack.”
Another chimed in, “Neither one of you is being fair or realistic with the other. For you, since you’re the one asking, everyone is entitled to their feelings, and it’s not fair to say he ‘can’t’ feel a certain way. I think what you really mean is you don’t want him to vent about his feelings to you when unpleasant pregnancy symptoms cause him minor frustrations. You don’t get to police his feelings, but you can set boundaries about what you’re willing to do in regards to his feelings.”
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Source: Reddit