Breakups·
THE BATHROOM TIMING CRISIS
A wife battles her husband's daily bathroom timing, grappling with shared parenting, stalled family plans, and whether his hidden schedule means they can actually grow their family.
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A second baby was put on hold for one reason: her husband seemed to disappear into the bathroom at the exact moments their family needed him most.
The poster said she and her husband had been married seven years, together 11, and were raising a 3.5-year-old. But beneath the routine of preschool runs and bedtime, she said their marriage was already strained by more than she could fully put into a post. In her words, he lacked a "sense of responsibility and proactivity," and she had been "harboring so much resentment" since their first baby arrived. She was already in therapy, trying to work through it on her own.
What set her off now was his bathroom schedule.
Every morning, she said, he would poop during the toddler's wake-up, breakfast, and drop-off window. Every afternoon, he would do it again right after lunch. Every evening, right during bath and bedtime. She described each stretch as lasting about an hour, later editing that it might be split between pooping and showering. And when the family actually had somewhere to be, she said, he could change the timing "on command."
That, to her, was the problem. If he could hold it when necessary, why default to the busiest parts of the day?
She said she was already carrying most of the childcare load. She was "99%" the one waking with their child and getting him ready for preschool, and she usually handled bath and bedtime too unless she waited for her husband. Family planning had already been delayed for two years because of uncertainty around his work. Now he had a stable role, but when the subject of another baby came up, he told her it "depends on me."
She wanted two children, she said, because they had limited family in the U.S. and she wanted their son to have someone who was family when he got older. So she asked a direct question: how would they manage a newborn if he was gone for three hours every day at critical times?
His answer was that his parents could take care of the baby. The catch: they lived two hours away.
She said that was his "first and only solution," and it left her sad and disappointed. This was not a temporary emergency, she said. It was the daily reality of his schedule.
In later edits, she added more details: "He has very bad hemorrhoids," he refused to talk more about it, and he said the showering was because he felt icky. She also said he still hadn't installed their bidet after two years, streamed YouTube while driving, and was not doing drugs "that I know 100%."
She tried talking to his parents, but that went nowhere. His mother, she said, made excuses for him. In one blunt aside, she summed up the feeling: "I'm not his mom. I have better things to do."
By the end, she said she would "pause that thought now."