I’m still married, but have been contemplating divorce for awhile now due to a variety of reasons. Chief among them is my wife’s incessant need to always try to put me down to our kids in a misguided attempt to lift herself up.

Example: I was WFH today and my wife (SAHM) decided that she wanted to use this as an opportunity to sleep more. Not uncommon. I had to reschedule a couple of work calls to take my youngest to Kindergarten.

After picking him up, I told him that taking him to school and picking him up is always the highlight of my day. My wife then blurted out “THEN WHY DO YOU ALWAYS COMPLAIN ABOUT HAVING TO TAKE HIM TO SCHOOL?”

(I’ve never complained about it, but sometimes I can’t if I have a work conflict.)

I know this sounds minor, but comments like this are commonplace and I’ve told my wife repeatedly that they’re absolutely intolerable.

Another example: I was 15 minutes late to take our kids trick-or-treating 3 years ago because I had an unavoidable client meeting for work that ran long. Yesterday, my wife felt the need to say “thanks for actually making trick-or-treating a priority for our kids this year” in front of our two kids. Again, zero reason for her to make this comment.

How does everyone deal with this type of bullshit? I have an uncle who is a phenomenal person who literally hasn’t spoken to his kids in almost 15 years now because his ex-wife poisoned them against him. This is my absolute biggest fear when it comes to possibly getting a divorce, and I don’t know how to avoid it from happening.

And for the record, I’ve never, ever criticized my wife to our kids or even insinuated that she was anything less than the world’s best mother to them.