Husband Feels Like a Single Parent as Wife Spends Every Day with Grieving Friend

When a close friend suffers a devastating loss, it’s natural to step in and offer support.

But one man says his wife’s constant presence at a grieving friend’s home rather than their own has put an emotional and logistical strain on their household. So, he turned to Reddit for advice as he tries to balance compassion, parenting and financial reality.

In the post, he explained that his wife’s best friend “lost her husband about a month ago,” and his wife has “been at her home almost every single day since.”

Although he has tried to be compassionate about the situation, his job requires him to be on call some nights, and since “money is tight,” his family relies on that availability.

While he knows his wife’s friend is “struggling,” it has been “stressing [him] out a ton to be basically a single parent” since his wife is now never home.

Attempts to communicate his concerns didn’t go well either. After he raised the issue of “cutting back,” it just ended in an argument about him being “heartless.”

The situation escalated when he was called into work one night and had no childcare options, as his wife was at her friend’s house.

“I couldn’t leave our two daughters home alone ( 6 & 9) so I called my wife telling her she needs to head home now, I need to leave,” he recalled. “She told me no, and to figure it out.”

With no money for a sitter, no nearby family, and no friends who could step in, he made a split-second decision: he packed the kids into the car and dropped them off at the best friend’s house on his way to work.

However, his wife was “pissed.”

When he returned, a major argument erupted. He told her he was tired of being the only present parent and that their children needed her attention.

She lashed out and called him “heartless,” but he insists he simply wants her to “be a parent to our own kids.”

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Users raced to the comment section to provide their opinions on the situation. “A day with a grieving friend is needed, a week is kindness, a month when you have kids at home is bizarre,” one wrote.

Another described the wife’s behavior as “neglect” rather than “bizarre,” emphasizing that she is “neglecting her family big time.”

Some even wondered if the wife was doing all of this to avoid her husband and the kids. “This sounds more like an excuse to get away from you/kids than it does helping a friend,” one commenter wrote. “There is something bigger going on behind the scenes.”