A wife has resorted to turning off the Wi-fi every time her husband goes to the toilet, as she says he spends extended periods of time in there on his phone to avoid helping out with their newborn babies.
The woman took to social media to ask if she was being an ‘asshole’ for cutting her husband’s toilet breaks short, after he began spending nearly half an hour on the loo whenever she needed his help.
The mum explained she and her partner were on their maternity and paternity leave with their newborn twins, adding that his trips to the bathroom had become increasingly frequent since their arrival.
Taking to Reddit to explain her situation, the woman said whenever she asks her husband to do something with the children – if it’s his turn for ‘a diaper, a bottle, even just soothing a fussy newborn’ – he ‘always’ goes to the bathroom first.
She explained:
I would rather let him use the restroom first than have to put down a baby mid task, but over the past couple months he has been spending more and more time in there. He always takes his phone. He is always watching YouTube.
His average session is 25 minutes in there, often longer, rarely shorter.
The woman said it’s the most ‘frustrating’ at feeding time, as one of the twins needs to be held in a certain way for health reasons so she cannot double feed. She said she ends up getting up, warming the bottles up, changing one baby, feeding and burping that baby before laying them down, getting the other baby changed and feeding them before her husband ‘can be bothered to emerge’.
She said she has only ‘truly’ started keeping track a week and a half ago, but since then he has ‘ditched’ her eight times in 10 days to go and ‘camp out in the bathroom and let [her] finish 80% of the childcare’.
The woman did say her husband is on medication that makes him spend a lot of time in the bathroom, but it ‘doesn’t affect him all the time’, and the doctor said it was ‘highly unlikely’ he would need to spend so much time in the toilet.
She continued:
[The] doc wanted him to come in for a checkup if this was the case and husband said oh it’s not THAT bad and refuses to go in.
Because of this, the woman has started turning the Wi-fi off whenever he is in the bathroom for more than 10 minutes. ‘He has not spent more than 15 minutes in the bathroom at a stretch today, but is extremely upset,’ she explained.
Fellow Redditors unanimously agreed that she was not an asshole, and were quick to criticise the dad for slacking on his duties, with one person writing: ‘What kind of a man f*cks around on the internet while his baby screams and cries? He deserves it.’
Others said the story was ‘all too familiar’, with many saying their husbands were guilty of doing the exact same thing.
Hopefully her tactic will have worked and her husband will start helping out a bit more around the house.
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A Broadcast Journalism Masters graduate who went on to achieve an NCTJ level 3 Diploma in Journalism, Lucy has done stints at ITV, BBC Inside Out and Key 103. While working as a journalist for UNILAD, Lucy has reported on breaking news stories while also writing features about mental health, cervical screening awareness, and Little Mix (who she is unapologetically obsessed with).