Work is busier than ever. After a colleague suddenly quit, everything has ramped up by about 100 per cent: meetings, work trips, late nights in the office. I feel fulfilled and am enjoying the acceleration in tempo, but it’s been bad for my marriage, as it feels like my wife resents me.
My wife also works full time – I’m a solicitor, she’s a book publisher. We both have very full-on jobs and both contribute to bills equally. Admittedly, ever since we got together she’s always done the lion’s share of house stuff, such as cooking and cleaning and our social calendars, but ever since work has ramped up, she’s taken on pretty much everything.
She makes breakfast, lunch, dinner and she offered to help my sisters plan my mum’s birthday trip in Greece (though no one ever asked her to). I would do it, but I just don’t have the time, plus I’ve been training for the London Marathon. My wife keeps making snide comments whenever I go out for runs and saying that my work means she has to put her own work on the back burner. How can that be? What can I say to her to get her off my back?
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Keren Blackmore is the founder of Leap of Thought, and a team and leadership coach with over 20 years of experience in senior roles in media. She partners with mid‐ to senior‐level leaders to strengthen their leadership impact, build confidence, and navigate their careers. Her coaching blends neuroscience, mental fitness practices, and energy management.
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Let’s start by acknowledging that this sounds like an unusually busy season in your life. These periods can be energising and exciting and you are gaining fulfillment from going “all in”. Unfortunately, it sounds like you are trying to navigate this period alone – in parallel, rather than with your wife, making assumptions about your roles and expectations. She is likely doing the same.
Rather than asking how you can get your wife “off your back”, pause to think about how it would feel if she said that about you. A better question is: how can we navigate this period with more energy and ease together?
It’s time for a new approach – one of openness and honest communication. Before approaching this, take a look in the mirror at your role and how you may want to change some of your behaviour.
Exercise some self-awareness
Most of us think we are self aware, but few of us are. Self awareness is a key leadership skill that will support you at work too. It’s not easy and can be confronting to recognise that aspects of how we behave are experienced wildly differently to how they were intended.
For example, while it may seem perfectly reasonable to you, to be focused primarily on work and marathon training at the expense of anything else, how might your actions be experienced by your wife? Does she experience you and your behaviours as reasonable? What might it be like to be her right now? If the shoe was on the foot, what would it be like for you?
Take time to reflect on your wife’s role in supporting you and your priorities. What are the things she does so that you don’t even have to think about them? Often termed as “invisible work”, these are the thankless tasks that take time, mental bandwidth and get little to no recognition. The things that are currently enabling you to get stuck in at work, marathon training, and not having to be involved in the logistics of your mother’s birthday celebration. Meals on the table, ingredients bought, bins taken out, bills paid, clothes washed, hung up, ironed (including all that running gear you must be getting through). All done, on repeat. Feel free to add to the list.
Show gratitude, and then simplify your schedule, together
Let’s acknowledge all that your wife does, and how it might feel not to be acknowledged for any of it. Can you move from “no one ever asked her to”, to feeling and showing genuine gratitude?
When you speak to her, start by saying “I appreciate all you have done recently,” and then name the specific things that she has done and how it’s helped you. If there are things she has taken on that are unnecessary, thank her, and be clear that you will do them.
Your wife has sent you strong signals that she is having to make sacrifices. Where are you willing to share the load?
Invite your wife to have a conversation. Look at the next one to three months together, agree on your individual and joint priorities and be honest about what you both have capacity for. Then, divide and conquer. Who is doing what? You can experiment as you go, but having the discussion is an essential step.
It may be that some things may need to be de-prioritised for now, simplified, or you invest in support to pick up the slack. A cleaner, or delivery meal toolkits, for example.
Try and establish a simplified, low-effort rhythm in your lives to remove decision fatigue. For example, deciding that Mondays are a pasta dish, Tuesdays are a curry and so on. It doesn’t have to be forever, but these changes can be transformative in helping to remove the hassle and friction from your busy lives.
Get your priorities in order at work
Both of you sound like you have “greedy jobs” – a term coined by Harvard economist Claudia Goldin – all-consuming jobs that expect your time, your availability, and your energy.
They come with the pay and status but they expect you to be always-on. Notice what parts of the role most energise you, and think about how you can position yourself to own those areas going forward. Be strategic and intentional about your approach and prioritise ruthlessly, focusing on high value work and put boundaries around the less important work. Are there meetings you don’t need to be in for example?
A common challenge I see in leadership coaching is that incredibly capable, ambitious, brilliant leaders spread themselves too thinly. Long term, it can be exhausting and despite best of intentions, dilutes your effect.
Make time for each other
Make time for each other to connect as a couple. Leading marriage experts, The Gottman Institute, talk about the importance of small moments of daily connection that they call “connection rituals”. Sharing a coffee together in the morning, a kiss, a chat about the day, for example, as well as higher effort investments in the relationship, like a regular walk, a date night, a shared experience.
Your careers are important to you both, but from what you have described, to find a path forward will require the two of you. All relationships require investment, how much are you willing to invest in yours?
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