My (41F) husband (44M) and I have been married almost 20 years and we have 3 kids (18, 16, 15). The first half of our marriage was very hectic and filled with highs and lows. Won’t get into it, but we got through it.

Anyway, I started to worry about our dynamic with our kids about 7 years ago. I was working odd jobs to be available for the kids before and after school. I was the main person getting the kids to do homework. He would get home for dinner and say let’s get ice cream and watch TV.

A few years later, kids are older and I get a real career. I’m excited to hopefully now share bad guy duties with my husband now that we’re working ‘equally’. A month later he takes a new job that put him out of state during the week for a year. I beg him not to take the higher paying job because I don’t want to be a single mom during the week. He takes it anyway and COVID hits. Now my kids are struggling with e-learning and having mental health issues.

We were all stressed out all the time. My kids really lashed out at me because I was the only one there during the week, and I admit, I didn’t handle it well. I was exhausted physically and emotionally. My husband would tell me all the things I’m doing wrong and then come home on the weekends and be the fun dad, buy them ice cream & do fun things. This went on for over 2 years.

He’s back home now. We make decisions together, but I mostly have to deliver the news to the kids and implement things. He doesn’t like confrontation and lacks follow through. When the kids get upset with a decision, he steps in and ends the conversation I’m having with them by telling me I’m being too harsh. Sometimes he would even have separate conversations later with the kids and change ‘our’ decision without telling me. The handful of times he has delivered the news to the kids, he starts off with ‘I agree with mom’ or ‘mom thinks XYZ and I agree with her’. He has told me that the kids get upset with him when he agrees with me. When I begged him to share bad guy duties he would just say, ‘It’s not my job to fix your relationship with the kids. They don’t treat me that way.’ I told him I don’t need him to fix my relationship with the kids, I just want him to acknowledge his role by not sharing bad guy duties, not always being a present parent, and not hinder our relationships by undercutting me. I’m upset he can’t see it.

So, AITAH for telling him his choices have contributed to my poor relationship with our kids and is it wrong for me to be upset that he doesn’t see it?

Notes: We are all in individual therapy and plan on starting couples therapy/family therapy soon