A simple call about paperwork spirals into a storm of misunderstanding and raw emotion, revealing the fragile balance between ambition and personal connection. In the chaos of managing a business, children, and a partner’s fears, he confronts the painful truth that sometimes success demands more than just hard work—it demands empathy and grace amid the unknown.
I’ve been starting/running a trades business in a major city. It’s going into its fifth year, we have 8-12 employees, have won awards and grown every year.
The conflict: I called me wife to ask her about a paperwork problem for taxes – turned out we needed the completed 2024 for something (we hadn’t yet filed). She said it would give her a panic attack and she’d faint if I said she had to.
I found her docs on my desk in the morning, figured I would try to fit them in during the day but couldn’t. So as I was figuring out the plan for the evening time wise (two kids, lots to do) I called and asked when she wanted me to do it.
I meant that evening, would she prefer I work late and come back at a certain time to take over for the rest? Come home do bath and dinner and then do it? None of the above? She got very angry and said I was asking her to figure out my life for me.
I tried to clarify that I wasn’t and what I meant, that I hadn’t had a chance to do it as I only had the files in the morning and she yelled at me and told me I always had some excuse because of my “hobby business.”
I didnt yell back I just sai, “That was way over the line. Totally unnecessary and inappropriate.”
I said that I put everything into building the business to help and support our family, and I couldn’t believe how she could dismiss me and .. everything. That it felt like she was calling me a loser and a failure.
She angrily responded that she just called it a hobby and I was entitled to think what I want but I was a “fucking liar” for saying that she was implying a lot more than just one word.
She said she was just expressing frustration and I said, well no, you insulted me and you knew how much it would hurt.. that was the point. She didn’t argue, just said she was entitled to express her frustration and it wasn’t her job to manage my feelings about what she said.
Context about this:
My business is in its fifth year.
I won’t say it’s been easy. It’s been the hardest thing I ever did in my life. I (38M) had a desk job and was quite successful in one sector but the low pay, heavy hours and dependency on grants and funding was heavy.
I couldn’t imagine doing it another 40 years, so I went looking for new careers. I applied to things I was over qualified for. I applied to things I was qualified for. I applied to things that, you’d think, anyone could get.
Crickets. It is hard to change careers. Then I found the skilled trades. I had to go back to school and get fit in one fell swoop, but I did it and toughed it out in some high production companies.
Eventually, a friend of mine at one and I decided to start our own. We saw many problems in our industry, for employees, for clients, for owners and opportunity in the market.
It’s been a wild ride. Everything was progress well until a fire destroyed our service trucks in year three. In year four, my wife had a second child and experienced severe PPD which resulted in numerous hospitalizations and..
well.. rage directed at me that was highly destabilizing. The worst happened almost a year to the day of the fires, which we hadn’t yet climbed out of.
It is march 2025 but it feels like marchvebbruary 2024 to me. The bad year just never ended as the build up of critical business stuff that needs to address is .. haunting. It took us six months to replace the trucks after the fire but keep running somehow, and we still were dealing with early years growth pains.
I thought the next year would be tough but stable. It was not, it was worse. The worst year of my life, and I’ve had some rough ones before all this.
My wife has worked for us and helped, not because it was desperately needed but because she couldn’t get another job. It allowed her to take a year off for both our kids and stay home.
I pay 75% of expenses, and the situation places extreme stress on me as if I falter or revenue is low there is nothing else coming in. On the other hand, she works from home and has flexible hours and both kids are in daycare full time.
When I am home late or need to work more for the money / business to survive first 5 she complains I’m not home. When I’m home she complains about money things.
I’m a pretty stoic person in terms of being screamed at, but this was just beyond beyond.
I wish many things were different, but to call my work a hobby when it’s the only support for our family and important to me?
She sees no problem. I feel pointedly degraded.
Conclusion
The core conflict centers on the husband’s deep personal investment and sacrifice in building his trades business, which his wife dismissed as a “hobby.” This term caused significant emotional distress for the husband, who felt degraded and unseen, especially given the financial responsibility he carries. The wife maintains that she was merely expressing frustration and is not responsible for managing his emotional reaction to her words.
Given the fundamental disagreement over whether the wife’s language was an acceptable expression of frustration or a deliberate, hurtful insult, the key question remains: When one partner dismisses the other’s primary source of income and life effort with derogatory language, is the speaker entitled to claim immunity from responsibility for the emotional damage caused?
Here’s how people reacted:
My wife was driving me crazy every single month. She was completely unstable, narcissistic, aggressive, and even abusive towards our two daughters.
I asked her to get checked by a doctor and she would flip out and make all of her feelings my fault. She would have small moments where she would go completely insane.
The last straw was her throwing a bottle of hot sauce at a five thousand dollar 8k monitor, completely destroying it and barely missing my face by mere centimeters.
I packed up my things immediately, didn’t say a word to her, grabs the kids and left for her parents house.
It took her mother (who doesn’t even like me) completely flipping out on her and causing the biggest family scene I’d ever seen before she went to a psychiatrist where she was diagnosed with PMDD.
It was like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders. She’d been gaslighting me for years over this issue and for professionals to tell me it wasn’t my fault was pure vindication.
My wife is much much better now. She got on a some medication she doesn’t even have to take anymore and the symptoms went away.
Now when her period is coming up she warns me. We both share a samsung account so her period tracking on her watch can warn me about 6 days before her period is due and I do everything in my power to be the happiest sweetest man for her during her worst weeks and she warns me when she’s feeling aggressive for no reason so the kids and I can give her some space.
The experience made us stronger as a family and gave me alot of perspective and understanding for my wife when all I had before was bitter rage for her abuse.
a small business can start as a hobby if it’s something you do primarily for enjoyment without the main goal of making a profit.
however, once you begin actively trying to make money (such as marketing, selling regularly, or reinvesting in the business), it usually shifts from being a hobby to a business. especially if you are now leaning on it to support your family.
if you’re in the usa, the IRS considers an activity a business if it’s intended to make a profit, especially if it earns income in three out of five years.
if it’s more of a side project **where expenses outweigh income**, it might still be classified as a hobby for tax purposes.
your wife might be viewing this business as a ticking time bomb. as an activity that is causing more financial trouble than stable financial support.
either way, she doesnt take your business seriously. whether or not she’s justified in that view, we cannot say. plenty of businesses seem to be doing well, win awards, but are really just ticking time bombs.
you (and your accountant) know the financial health of your company. if youre truly doing well, find a way to paint the picture that this is no longer a hobby but the money tree that supports the family.
i dont think you’re the asshole. i think she may be. idk what the conversation truly was, but i dont understand her reaction to you trying to communicate in attempt to coordinate taking care of both the business and the family
Also, this comment about this being a hobbyist business does remind me of my last semester in grad school, where my professor shared a slide that classified businesses by size and revenue. I’m not going to dig through my old hard drives to find it, but “hobbyist” was one of them and it was around the size you mentioned. Basically the scale, iirc, was under 15 employees, certain amount of revenue, and notably, the business would cease to exist if the primary driver (in this case, you) retired. So I’m wondering if that’s where her phrasing came from.
Once she calmed down after the most recent one, we talked and she told me she doesn’t consider the words to be all that important.
I told her a short anecdote I heard years ago, it goes like “a little boy with anger issues was instructed by his father that every time he gets angry, he should hammer a couple nails into the fence instead of lashing out. After a couple good sessions, the fence was covered in nails.
He was then instructed to take the nails out of the fence.
Once that task was completed, the fence was basically ruined, filled with holes.
The point is that although you can try to undo the nails you drive in, the words still leave holes and you can’t undo that. It takes a lot more work to either repair or replace the fence, and you can’t always do that with the people you love”.
Words have meaning by people you love.
What she said is bad. But even you acknowledge that she was frustrated and said it in the heat of the moment. So I think it is forgivable thing if she sincerely apologize afterwards.
However, her lackluster apology indicate that she has deeper discontents. And your unwillingness to accept her apology indicate you have insecurities and resentment toward her behavior. Your feelings is valid and this level of contempt from her will kill your relationship.
This is the preverbal straw the broke the camel’s back and you need to address the underlying burden that is causing the issue and not ask reddit about how heavy the straw is.
2) How long was she left alone to care for the children after she suffered PPD? How many hours a day/week?
3) Your entire post was “me me me” peppered with how terrible she is. Can she post her side? **You** couldn’t do it another 40 years, how much discussion was there around her having to stay home indefinitely?
4) When you quit your job and started your business, what discussion was there around it?
All in all, your wife can’t handle finding tax documents and is so engaged at you that your marriage is about to collapse and you may find yourself single with two kids.
It also sounds like you are under some incredible stress. Is there any possible way you can leave the business to a trusted worker for even just a day or two for a break? You seriously sound like you need to get aeay for a bit to recover, destress, and reground yourself.
Please look after your health. Big internet hug from me, if you consent to being hugged.
Not just emotionally, but financially. Financial abuse can be simply diminishing your contribution, because in this case it causes you to shoulder more of a burden.
I got a divorce over PPD. My advice to any man going through it: only stand by her if she’s clearly admitting the issue and seeking help.
She will destroy you, destroy the marriage, and most importantly of all, she will destroy the kids.
Believe me now or find out the sad way.
File for divorce and make it clear you’ll withdraw it if you see real progress in her treating her PPD.
Sounds like wife is still suffering from PPD – or maybe she’s just naturally a b\*\*\*h? One would expect that she’d be proud of you tackling a new business and being successful at it.
Maybe you and your wife could benefit from some counseling — her reaction was waaay over the top, and either there’s some frustration boiling just under the surface or she needs some help. Hard to tell from this side.
Your business is keeping a roof over your heads, food on the table and pays for all necessities.
Your wife is an AH. She also needs therapy if she didn’t get it PP. She needs to say why she’s always so angry and resentful. She’s deliberately saying things that she knows will hurt you.
That is the sort of line you never want to use on your spouse, because it can be turned around on you so easily.
“You feel like my business is consuming too much of my time? Not my job to manage your feelings”.
\>On the other hand, she works from home and has flexible hours and both kids are in daycare full time.
I’m willing to bet it’s cheaper to drop the daycare and get a full time employee. Let her be a SAHM and get an employee that can help the business grow.
And I suspect there’s a lot of backstory behind her angry words
Not that it justifies what she said…but her words were a symptom of a larger problem my dude
You can tell her she is entitled to feel frustrated she is not entitled to place her frustration on you.
That ain’t the only problem you got, Bucky.
Lazy.
Disgusting.
Useless.
Ungrateful.
Toxic.
See more….
She yelled at you? Does she do that with any regularity?