My wife has been complaining recently that our kids always seem to prefer spending time with me over her. They never go to her for anything they need, it's always me.
I just answered that it's because I spend more time with them than she does. She stated that I don't so I broke it down for her just point blank.
Both kids are young and need parental supervision for everything.
They wake between 5.30am and 6am. I am the one who gets up with them every single morning.
Wife gets up at 7.30am weekdays and about 9am weekends.
Low end that's 13.5 hours I spend more with them.
I also do bedtime for both kids. That takes about 1 hour a night for baths and stories etc. that's another 7 hours a week.
Wife also says she gets stressed / touched out a lot, I often take the kids with me to the supermarket or to the park or something to let her have along bath in peace or an afternoon nap. Probably around 3.5 hours a week if we also.add in that I'm the one who also takes kids to all extra curriculars and picks them up.
She does not ever have the kids on her own, the longest she does is the time it takes me to have a shower and dressed each morning.
So I just broke it down plainly like above. I effectively spend a full actual day more a week with them. I didn't say it in any kind of a moaning way or anything like that, I do actually really enjoy spending time with them so I'm quite happy with the arrangement.
I just feel that she can't complain that the kids don't want to spend time with her when she spends proportionally so much less of her time with them.
An I the asshole for pointing this out?
Edit and an Update.
Thank you all for your comments. I wasn't expecting this post to get anywhere near this traction and I will read them all.
Something I missed in my original post - work. We own a business together, we both work at it 5 days a week 9.30-4.30. Its not stressful or particularly difficult work as the business has got to the stage where we are able to take a step back and it mostly runs itself.
Update. 18month old woke at 5.30am this morning. It's now 7.30am and she's still in bed so clearly our conversation had no impact. I don't really care or have any desire to change things because I quite like how they are so I don't plan to push it.
My (47F) husband (47M) asked for a separation on our 14th anniversary, while we were away in a foreign country to celebrate. While we weren’t as close as we used to be, we almost never fought and generally enjoyed each others company and families. We do not have any children.
The night before our anniversary, he brought up he wasn’t very happy in the relationship but didn’t know why. The next morning, I asked to see his phone and he said no. He said I would find “flirty” messages with one or more other women on it. He had made some female friends through school and work and he said felt like there might be someone out there who was a better fit for him.
I said I did not want to do a trial separation, as I don’t believe you can work on something if you aren’t living together. If he wanted to separate it would be final. He understood but said it was something he HAD to do.
After being away for only 2 days, we rebooked our flights home, flew home and he packed some belongings and left. 7 days later he asked to come home and we started marriage counselling. He had a lot of trouble admitting he had at least one emotional affair. The counselling was not helpful, he was defensive and not open to it. I suspect something physical happened with the other woman but I do not have any proof. He had deleted all his “flirty” texts, snapchat, etc so I could not see them.
After 4 weeks of living together again and attending counselling sessions, he decided he no longer wanted to try to save the marriage and he was leaving. He packed up and left a few hours later. He stayed with a friend, found a new apartment and signed a one year lease.
I was devastated and even had to take time off work to process what had happened and attend individual counselling.
After a 4 weeks, I started to feel a bit better. I went out for drinks with a group of four coworkers that live in my area and found I really enjoyed one of them (42M) a lot. I had only met him over Zoom before this. We started seeing each other a couple times a week. Quite quickly it grew into a truly amazing, loving relationship. I’ve stayed in counselling throughout as it wasn’t easy to process the sudden ending of my long term marriage at the same time as beginning something new. It’s been about 7 months now.
My ex-husband eventually decided he wanted to try to save the marriage again, but I declined. He says I’m TA for starting a new relationship so quickly (within 6 weeks of him leaving). Our relationship was over as I can no longer trust him, and he has hurt me immensely. I do not want a relationship with someone I cannot trust. Am I TA for moving on?