We had our first child a few months ago, and since then our marriage hasn’t been the same again. In the order of things around here, the baby comes first, my mother-in-law comes second, and I’m at the bottom, where no care is given to me.
I understand the needs of a baby, don’t get me wrong. It’s the reason we brought her mother here to help. Currently, the baby is four months old, but my wife uses him as an excuse not to do anything around here anymore. She stopped cooking the very first day she gave birth. I had to come home from work and put something together by myself.
It’s either the baby has worried her throughout the day or she is too tired to stand on her feet and do anything. You would ask me what her mother has been doing. Sorry to say, but her mother is the laziest mother I’ve ever seen. She’s here to help, but it looks like we are the ones helping her.
She doesn’t know how to cook, and she complains that when she cooks, no one eats it, so she has also stopped cooking around here. She would go to the street and buy waakye or anything else on sale. Once she’s full, the rest of us can go to hell. So I spoke to my wife about it one evening, saying there should be a way to make this work so I could also feel important in this house.
She said I was talking too much and that I was old enough to take care of myself. The baby would be in her arms while she’s on TikTok watching videos. The baby would sleep at night, and she still wouldn’t give me space to perform my husbandly duties in bed. Because she wants to avoid me, she lets the baby sleep in the middle. Immediately I make a move, she picks up the baby and starts breastfeeding him.
When she resumed work after maternity leave, I thought things would change. She would get home from work before I did, but she still wouldn’t cook anything. Sometimes she would call me and tell me, “If you know you’re hungry, then eat before you get home. There’s nothing in this house for you.”
So I stopped giving housekeeping money because what’s the point? She came asking, and I told her I had no money to give since I buy my own food. She asked, “How about me? How do I get breast milk for the baby if you don’t give housekeeping money?”
So now, even housekeeping money goes to the baby and not the entire house. She complained to her mom that I’m intentionally starving her because I feel the baby has taken my place. Her mom tried to have a conversation with me. I shut that door before she could even open her mouth.
Before my wife got pregnant, it was always about the two of us. Even when she was pregnant, it was still the two of us, playing with her tummy, massaging her feet, and talking about our day. I knew the baby would bring a change in our lives, but I didn’t think this change would be so huge that I would be sidelined.
What’s happening now is that she has formed a team with her mother. They sit and talk all night. If they are not talking, she would be on social media while the baby stays in her arms. If I ask her to put the baby down because he’s sleeping, she interprets it as me wanting the baby out of the way.
We don’t talk like we used to. No intimacy for a very long time now. I haven’t eaten food cooked by my wife since she delivered. And to make matters worse, last weekend she did the laundry and left mine. She asked me to come and do it because she was tired after washing her own clothes and the baby’s.
Honestly, I got angry and started telling her my mind. I told her that if she thought all she wanted was a baby, and now that she had one she was tired of the marriage, then she could leave. She fought back, asking me to buy a washing machine instead of fighting about laundry. Her mom appeared. She immediately took her daughter’s side without even knowing what the issue was.
She said, “You’re a man. You don’t have to talk to your wife this way, threatening her to leave the house.”
I gave her the same respect I would give my own mom and walked out. True to her words, my wife didn’t wash my clothes. This whole thing is making me feel like I no longer matter in this marriage, so maybe I should leave the house for them. Sometimes, too, I think the mother is the problem, so I should ask her to leave and find a neutral person to do what she does. After all, what does she even do in this house?
I’m not happy in my own marriage. I feel like a stranger. I feel very small, like a third-class citizen in my own country. If you were in my shoes and going through this, what would you do? My wife wasn’t like this at all until we had a child. Is the baby the problem? Is her mother the issue? Or am I the one frustrating my own marriage?
