The day-off thief

My wife stole my day off. How does someone steal your day off? Pretty easy. I took a day off, and it has become her day off. Certainly she doesn’t know she’s done this, but it happens to me every time. Maybe I should say something. Maybe I should grab her and say, “Hey! STOP stealing my days off! They’re mine, not yours!”. It feels a little selfish though. She doesn’t get days off being a stay at home mom. So, does that mean half of my days off are really her days off? Or are all of my days off her days off? How does this work?

It seems that most things in a marriage are suppose to be 50/50. So should I feel selfish if I use half of my days off for myself and the other half for her? The problem, is our children take 75% of my days off (thanks to being sick all the time), which only leaves 25% for us to split up between ourselves, and we tend to need to save those for emergencies! But, back to the original problem, I took a day off today, for myself, and now that day off has been stolen. It quickly becomes a day where I get to watch the kids so she can go out and run errands. Errands she’d planned to run with our two children, but now has the shining opportunity to run them all alone. Sure, they’re still errands, but for her. I imagine it’s like time off. In a way.

So what to do. I think my only recourse is to fall back on one of the foundations of a good marriage. To simply explain to her that I had intended this to by my day off, and that I had things planned for my day off that I haven’t been able to do, due to her day off thievery. In a word. Communication. I need to get better at communicating my intentions so that we can come to an understanding. My wife didn’t know that I had grandiose plans for today. I’d like to think we’re on the same wavelength, that she can basically read my mind, but I know now that something like that takes work and dedication that I haven’t put forth. We just aren’t to the mind-reading stage yet.

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