AITA for telling my wife she’s gatekeeping my time when it comes to our kids and her emotions?

A Redditor shared a story about a conflict with his wife over their daughter’s phone call request. He frequently travels for work, and his wife, a stay-at-home mom, manages the kids and has her own small business. Recently, when their daughter had a rough day and wanted to call him, his wife, feeling overstimulated, decided against it and later told him.

He expressed his concerns, saying he wants his children to feel they can always reach out to him. However, his wife took issue with his comments, feeling that he didn’t fully respect her perspective. Now he wonders if he handled things poorly. Read on for the full story.

‘ AITA for telling my wife she’s gatekeeping my time when it comes to our kids and her emotions?’

Before we go into the situation, I (33M) own my own company, but the job requires me to be away from home for weeks at a time. When I am home it’s usually only for 4-5 days before leaving for work again. My wife (30F) is a SAHM who is often overstimulated and who just recently started her own small business.

Now on with the situation. So my wife text me this evening saying I may want call my daughter tomorrow and talk to her, because she’s had a rough day. According to her my daughter was tired our two boys were fighting and this caused my daughter to become upset and start crying for me.

My wife being overstimulated didn’t let her call me so she could talk to me. When I asked why my daughter wasn’t able to call me my wife responded with “I was overstimulated and just wanted them to go to sleep.” When I read the word “overstimulated” I called her.

My wife’s love language is affirmation and I’ve learned that calling and giving her words of affirmation helps her calm down. We talk for several minutes with me telling her how great of a job she’s doing with the kids and with sales at her business.

Because honestly she has been doing great with keeping the business up and holding down the home front. Then she asked, “are you mad that I didn’t let her call you?” I said “no but it does upset me when I find out one of my children was literally verbally crying for me but wasn’t allowed to call me.”

This caused her to blow up on me saying I don’t know what she goes through on a daily basis because I’m always gone for work and that she feels like I don’t respect her feelings as much as I do our children’s feelings.

So I brought up that this wasn’t the first time she’s done this and asked her how it would make her feel if one of the kids were crying for her but weren’t allowed to call her. She again said I wasn’t considering her feelings. So I asked her why she doesn’t let them call me if they’ve been “bad”.

And she replied “I’m hanging up now. I don’t appreciated being told I gate keep my kids phone time with their dad as a form of punishment or that your not respecting that I didn’t let her call because I was overstimulated. Call her in the morning.” And she hung up.

I never once downplayed the fact she was overstimulated. I just pointed out that I don’t want my kids to EVER feel like they can’t call me, when they need me to talk to them after a bad day, because it might cause someone else to be upset. So AITA?

TL;DR my wife didn’t let my daughter call me when my daughter was upset and is now mad that I implied she gate keeps their phone time with when she’s overstimulated or trying to punish them.

Take a look at the comments from fellow users:

Trick_Photograph9758 −  Too much missing information. If your wife is constantly “overstimulated” (I don’t even know what that means in this context) then why is she taking on a job in addition to dealing with the kids? What is the financial situation? How much do you make compared to her? Basically, if she’s contributing half the income, plus dealing with the house and kids while you’re never home, of course she’s losing it.

On the other hand, if you’re making a ton of money, she agreed to be a SAHM, and then she’s taking on a stressful side hustle just for the hell of it, then that’s ridiculous. Sounds like you need to have a serious discussion about roles and responsibilities for making money, raising your kids, and dealing with the house.

embopbopbopdoowop −  Your edit makes a HUUUGE difference. Without it, this reads like your wife hadn’t let them talk to you at all. YTA. Your kid was screaming for you *after having already FaceTimed with you for two hours*. There was no reason to think she would stop after talking to you again.

Your wife was done done done with the screaming and fighting and needed the little ones in bed. She did what was best for everyone so the tired kids could sleep and she could avoid exploding in frustration.

Purple_Bowling_Shoes −  YTA, and I don’t like to say that to you. There’s a lot going on here, but the bottom line is if you’re gone for weeks at a time you don’t have a lot of standing to argue with your wife about things like this.You say you call every morning and FT for two hours every night, so it’s not like she’s keeping them from you.

You don’t mention your kids’ ages, but I’m guessing they’re all under ten, and having three of them to try to wrangle without help is a lot. Kids that age are difficult in the best of circumstances, but your kids are living with their mom full time and you just pop in for a few days every several weeks.

Your wife told you your daughter would need some special attention from you. She’s being your eyes and ears while you’re gone, and you disagree with the way she managed it.

You’re going to have to sacrifice something. Sacrifice financially to be a more active parent, or sacrifice being an active parent to provide financially. But you don’t get to insist that your wife sacrifice more in order for you to try to manage parenting from a distance.  

Pantherdraws −  My guy, you are gone LITERALLY 90% of the time, if not more, and your only contribution to the family outside of a paycheck is a couple hours’ worth of Facetime every day. The only person “gatekeeping” you from your kids is YOU.. YTA

Budget_Wafer382 −  I’d be overstimulated if I were a single parent of 3 kids under 10, too.

SunshineShoulders87 −  Put yourself in her shoes: she’s exhausted from doing all of it herself 24/7, two of her kids have been fighting, and now one of them is crying for the absent parent.

She’s barely holding it together and just needs these kids to get to bed so she can have a moment of peace, but just because that one kid called out for you she now has to get her phone, hope you’re available, talk to you for however long she wants, let the other kids talk to you because they’ll also want to join in now that dad’s on the phone, and then, once all that is over and everyone is sad and missing dad, she can start all over again.

Are you exhausted from all of that? Because I only have two kids and a very present coparent to help with everything and I f-ing am. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t punishing your daughter by not letting her call you, but was just trying to get things under control.

Once, my husband was away for a week and I sent him a cute photo of one of our girls. We’d just had a sweet text exchange where he’d also been complimentary of me, but, when he saw our daughter, he seemed to think she looked skinnier than before, (like she’d lost weight in my care) and asked what I’d been feeding her.

He’d just told me how thankful he was for me and how great of a mom I was, and, in the next breath, was questioning my parenting skills. Guess how much I thought of his sweet words after that?

However, all of that being said, NAH. I’m sure it’s very tough being away from your family (provided you don’t actually have a second or even third secret life going on) and heartbreaking to hear that one of your children was crying for you and you weren’t there.

sincereferret −  “….who was overstimulated.”. What does this even mean? That she’s stressed out because she’s doing all the emotional and physical load of the relationship?

[Reddit User] −  YTA. When you make kids, you have to actually PARENT them. You’ve abdicated your role as their father and left your wife to do all the childrearing. This is not good for your wife and not good for your kids. Get a new job. Be home more. Spend time with the people who love you.

If you don’t change quick, you’ll soon find out that the kids have grown up and you don’t know them, and your wife has moved on to somebody who can actually be a partner to her.

Lemon_Drop_Serenade −  YTA. The kids already got 2 hours of facetime with you in the evening. They were supposed to be in bed. Kids are notorious for demanding last minute “requests” when they’re supposed to be going to bed. You’d know that if you were around to parent them.

Your wife was right to draw a line and not call you a second time. If you were home at bedtime every single night, you’d also want to tell your kids to go the f to bed. But you’re not. So your perspective is different from your wife’s.

20frvrz −  You: I’m upset my child wasn’t allowed to call me

Her: you don’t know what I go through every day because you’re always gone. You don’t respect my feelings

You: this isn’t the first time my child wasn’t allowed to call me

Her: you’re not considering my feelings

You: why don’t you let them call me

How f**king dense are you. This isn’t about you! Stop making it about you! Your wife needs more, she needs help. Stop making her the villain here and ask her what you can do to improve the situation. For fucks sake, did you even read your own version of events?

Do you think the husband’s request for more accessible communication with his children was fair, or was his wife’s reaction understandable given her situation? How would you handle balancing emotions and communication in a family with frequent separations? Share your thoughts below!