Her pregnancy has been hell, she’s been telling me she’s in constant pain so much that I’ve been picking up the slack with the housekeeping (I work 58 hours over 6 days, I only get Sunday off), but with her immense pain she can still go out to dinner with her friends, go on vacations (she got back 2 weeks ago from an unplanned trip to Greece), or go baby shopping with her mom for multiple hours.

I’m not saying that she can’t do those things, I just wish she could do some very minimal chores so that I don’t have as much on my plate when I get home at 6 pm. Dishwasher loading + making the bed and tidying tables + dinner is all I ask for. I’ve been willingly doing the rest.

Recently though, she’s stopped doing those chores because of her physical pains. I’m exhausted too, and she negates all of my feelings because I’m not the one carrying the child.

Now onto the story: I came home to a messy house again, she had her friends over and they were watching stranger things all day. I asked her if she could load the dishwasher and tidy up the table, and I’d do the laundry and the sweeping and mopping.

She then told me that her back was sore, and though it may have been because I was so sick and tired of doing everything all the time, so I told her she was inconsiderate of my feelings and that her laziness can’t be overshadowed by her pregnancy forever.

I also said how could you hang out with your friends with immense back pains all day, why were there no chores done while they were over since you had so much energy?

She lost it on me, and left to stay with her mom, she painted this narrative with my parents-in-law that I’m an control freak. They’re telling everyone now and I’m just at a loss. She hasn’t returned.

Today I’ve been invited to a family reunion, which happens once or twice a year. This will be a reunion for “everybody’s birthday” since many of us are born in the same month.

My family ends up always choosing a place where I can barely eat anything. That’s because I can’t eat gluten due to sinus and my family is well aware of this because my grandmother always cooked for me separately. Also when we were in Italy everything is about pizza and I can’t eat regular pizza, I need to eat in a place that has the gluten free option.

Making it even more complicated, the chosen restaurant has a menu mainly composed of gluten dishes. I really dislike it. The other option is meat that 1) costs a lot and 2) I stopped eating because I’m going vegetarian.

Last year I had the same problem, I ended up attending and eating something I didn’t really want to eat, I ate meat while everyone was eating pizza and it always makes me feel weird. I want to eat what everyone is eating.

I would really like to attend, I’ve always had a difficult relationship with my family but lately I’m trying to get closer to them and let them know me and open up to me, but it feels like they keep ignoring my needs and limits and this makes me feel really sad and this is why I’m considering not attending, it wouldn’t make me feel good.

Am I selfish and a killjoy for thinking about not attending? Should I just pick some meat, pay extra and just shut up and let everybody else enjoy the reunion? Am I ruining everybody’s dinner?

Of course, every time this happens I talk to my mother and explain I have a problem with the menu and she understands but she will never take my side or be my advocate because she doesn’t have the courage to say anything different from what my grandparents want.

We’ve been married 5 years, our child is a newborn a couple of weeks old.

Partner is doing confinement, which means the wife has to avoid contact with water, not shower, not drink room temperature water (drink red date tea instead of water). She also has to eat very specific foods for her body to regenerate… (TCM stuff…)

I don’t buy into any of it, but she does so I kept an open mind.

We were financially a little tight so we didn’t hire a dedicated confinement lady, I decided to take the helm and bought a packaged food prep specialised for postpartum recovery (TCM approved) and focused on getting her what she needs through the month.

I’m not sure if it’s the hormones or the sleep deprivation… But I am doing literally everything else for her, she is just focused on feeding our little one (I understand this is super hard) and we agreed that we wouldn’t stress on breast milk as long as our bub is fed. We do whatever it takes to keep my wife sane.

I cook, I clean, I sterilise, I assemble the pump bottles, I brew her herbal tea every morning, and ensure the thermos gets replaced fresh every day.

She occasionally throws a tantrum (mild, she just starts giving me cold shoulder) when – the tea I make for her personal thermos bottle is either too hot to drink immediately, or too cold – the food I make is too simple ( sometimes I get too tired to skim the beef tallow/scum off the boiled soup)

She sometimes makes snide remarks like is ginger too expensive? When I didn’t put enough in her veges (I add to this, that it was intentional so she can actually consume them rather than just as flavour)

Our bub is only so young, but I’m not sure if I’ll ever be good enough for my wife. I don’t know what to do, I feel like if I bail, I bail on my kid.

I get darker thoughts sometimes, but I’ll never go that far, my kid needs me.

Did I do enough, or am I just selfish and not putting her needs ahead of mine enough?