HELP! My Wife Lied To Me!
By lied, I mean “wrote a best-selling book during her lunch hour!”
Dear Internet,
I hope someone is reading this because I really need some help and some backup on this situation. I just found out today that my wife has been leading a secret double life as a best-selling successful author. When we were pregnant last year, I helped make the decision that she should stop writing and focus on her full-time job and raising our baby. But now I’ve learned that this year has all been a lie.
Not only has my wife been spending spare moments at her full-time job working on a book project, she has also made an incredible, life-changing amount of money off of it! Sure, some might think “Oh, what an accomplishment” and congratulate her on this, but they would be wrong and encouraging bad behavior. My wife’s main priority should be me (and our baby, of course). Her free time at work shouldn’t be spent on writing a book. It should be spent on thinking about how my life (and our baby’s life) can be better! How many little things could she have done to make me (and our baby) more comfortable this year? Countless, surely.
You might be wondering, “Hey, isn’t that extra cash going to help out the family?” And my answer to that is, fine, but at what cost? Is it more important that my wife spend her spare moments at her job making up silly little stories or is it more important that I (and our baby) be at the center of her story? It’s clear to me that, by not treating me like the center of her universe, she just isn’t doing her wifely duties, which makes her, of course, a self-centered and selfish spouse. That might be okay when you’re young and don’t have responsibilities, but when you become a mother, you have to grow up.
Now that I know the truth about the situation, I realize that everything that has been going wrong this past year is because of her secret double life. Every time she has sighed about me not taking out the trash must have been about the book. Every moment she yawned during a hilarious story I was telling must have been about the book. I even remember hearing her complain multiple times about how having a newborn baby was so tiring, but that’s probably not even true. It was probably the book.
I’ve even talked to some friends about it during drinks after work today (don’t worry, my wife was watching our baby), and my friend mentioned that my wife might be acting up because she’s jealous of me or wants my attention. And it’s not just him who thinks that. After those drinks, I went to my weekly poker night, and another friend told me that this kind of behavior just isn’t appropriate in a wife and mother. While it’s okay for women to have boring nine-to-five jobs, it’s just not seemly for them to take on other projects that aren’t their family. We’re supposed to be their focus in life — at work, at home, and even during breaks.
Anyway. All this has got me thinking that it’s finally time for me to start my novel. Clearly, if my wife can do it, anyone can do it.
Tiffany Babb is a poet and essayist. You can find more of her work at www.tiffanybabb.com or follow her on twitter @explodingarrow.
