Reddit Stories - Spouse turned into a work addict and now our 10-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER STRONGLY dislikes

Episode Date: November 2, 2025

#redditstories #askreddit #aita #familyissues #workaddict #parentingwoes #relationshipproblems #communicationbreakdownSummary: My spouse's work addiction has caused our 10-year-old daughter to strongly dislike them. The strain on our family is palpable, with communication breakdowns and parenting woes at the forefront.Tags: redditstories, askreddit, reddit, aita, tifu, familyissues, workaddict, parentchildconflict, relationshipchallenges, communicationbreakdown, parentingwoes, familydynamics, worklifebalance, childpsychology, emotionalimpact, familyconflictresolution, marriageissues, workaddiction, familytherapy, parentingstrugglesBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/reddit-stories--6237355/support.

I hope you enjoy this story. Spouse turned into a work addict and now our 10-year-old daughter strongly dislikes her to the point where she refuses to communicate with her, and when I advised my spouse that she should try harder, she said she's giving up on being a mother. My family's broken and I'm trying to reassemble the pieces. I need advice. For context, my wife, 29F and I, 27M, are childhood sweethearts married now for around five years. I know we became parents and got married pretty young, but we've made it work. My wife's a small business owner.

She turned a passion into a career. I'm really happy for her. When she started, I promised her that since my work hours were flexible, I'd hold things down at home so she could focus on building her business. We were a team until we weren't. My wife's an extreme workaholic, and it's come between our family. We're not in a good place. Our daughters, 10F, caregiving is solely on me.

The time my wife and daughter spend together is made up mostly of short replies or silence. Our daughter isn't disrespectful. She's a good kid. She's just not as comfortable with her mom. My wife and I have had a lot of talks about the state of our family. With the business well off the ground and her not needing to personally oversee everything as often, we're working on reconnecting. It's been an uphill battle.

Recently, we had a bad fight. She told me she's given up on trying with our daughter. She said she's not good at it, and she's just going to stay in her lane. I told her she couldn't decide to clock out on our daughter during rocky stints. She said she's emotionally exhausted from repeatedly striking out. She feels she can't do anything right in our daughter's eyes.

She said I have it easy, that our daughter prefers me, and even made sure her whole class knew it. The class jab was about a school assignment. Our daughter had to interview someone she admired, and she asked me. My wife was hurt. She still feels away about it. She accused me of not understanding. She comes home to a child she carried not respecting her.

That our daughter's an expert critic when it comes to her. She went into a huge rant. The way she talked about her rubbed me the wrong way. I told her most of her complaints weren't our daughter's creation. She asked me what that meant, and I laid it out that she hasn't gone out of her way to connect with our daughter. She shut me down. She went into how she busts her ass for our family, and the least I could do is show up for her. All I do is show up for her, including holding down responsibilities that were supposed to share.

We aren't childless. It's no longer those me and her against the world days. I need to show up for our daughter too. She just kept saying she has a lot on her plate and how I'm supposed to be her peace. I refuted the only peace that ever seemed to matter these days was hers. She said our daughter and I are two of a kind and began sarcastically apologizing for her sacrifices, and if the business is what's driving us apart, then she'll renounce it. She'd make do.

I asked if we could skip her martyr routine and actually talk. The fight only escalated. I called the fight a complete waste of time, but she interpreted that as me calling her a waste of time. It was the worst fight we had in a while. Our daughter was at her grandparents, so she didn't hear anything. We're at an impasse. Things are still tense. I'd counter clear the air or how to reach her about our daughter.

She can't dismiss her like some disgruntled customer at work. In a lot of ways, I feel like a single parent. I don't believe she's being honest with herself about our issues. She's a distant figure who has a habit of talking at our daughter instead of to her. There are a lot of broken promises. Nothing ever mended. She doesn't try engaging. Our daughter loves anime, but my wife doesn't hold back on overly criticizing it in front of her.

her. Our daughter got into K-pop, but to my wife it's just bothersome noise around the house or in the car. Our daughter has stage fright. Yet she joined a school play because she knows her mom loves theater. My wife promised her she'd come. She didn't. The worst part was seeing our daughter realize she wasn't. My wife never apologized. She gave her, work was busy. I promised next time speech. She offered to bring our daughter with her on Take Your Child to Work Day. I thought it'd be good for them and a chance for our daughter to see more of what her mom does. But our daughter called me upset and wanted me to pick her up. She said her mom had immediately left her with a subordinate and went AWOL.

When my wife checked in on her, they fought. She told our daughter that a brady attitude won't be tolerated in her workplace. She and I had it out later. She apologized to our daughter and blamed blowing up on work frustration. She offered to bring her back another day, but our daughter refused. My wife always felt she was bad at articulating her feelings. She feels she comes off aggressive. That's partly why she leaves our daughter's caretaking to me.

But this fight has me questioning the nature of our relationship. I don't doubt she loves our daughter. I saw it firsthand during the pregnancy, and in our private conversations, she couldn't stop gushing about her. I felt her love in the little things. I'd something changed over over time. My wife isn't close with her parents. She usually has me talk with them on her behalf.

She has a mindset that parents slash kids don't have to be close. She believes since she turned out fine, so will our daughter. I'm failing to help their relationship in our own. We barely have quality to. time. Intimacy is shot. When we're out together, we aren't really together because in public, she's hyper-aware and has her business persona on. I quit else to do. I'm at a loss. I'm not trying to bash my wife. I just want everyone to be okay. I'm in a fight for my family right now. How do I mend my wife's and daughter's relationship while also repairing my marriage? Update,

Hey, guys. Thank you to everyone who reached out. It helped a great deal. I wanted to give an update. My wife, 29F, and I had a serious discussion about everything. It took us a while to get there because things were still tense after our last fight and our mini spats in between. Our daughter noticed the rift between her mom and me. She asked me about it. I'm not proud of that. I never wanted her involved in our fights. It was a larger wake-up call. I shouldn't have let it drag out. My wife asked if we could talk, and we both apologized for the fight. She was worried that I was calling it quits after how bad our last fight was. She took us not recovering as quickly as usual in my distance as me being done. She wanted to make a gesture for our marriage. I told her that

her harsh action towards our daughter had made me question our relationship. She said she felt bad for intensely ranting about our daughter. She was overwhelmed and used the situation as a punching bag. She loves our daughter but is at a loss as a parent. I told her we'd all keep being at a loss in our current state. We're disconnected as a couple and a family. I feel like a single parent and alone in our marriage. Our current way isn't working. Her Her lack of presence is the common root cause. I didn't feel like our daughter or I actually mattered and were more put up with by her. That statement really bothered her.

She denied it and promised our family does matter to her. She said she knows things aren't good right now, but she wants our family. That she gets frustrated and says stuff she doesn't mean, but it doesn't equate to how she actually feels. I told her it's not just her words. It's her actions. Her harshness and how she chooses everything over our family every single time while expecting us to just have smiles on our faces. We're not props, and I can't enforce a relationship between her and our daughter. She said she is trouble with contentment, and it's an endless chase.

She has this need to keep chasing after an inner feeling she's always felt she missed. We talked about the feeling before. It's a high and feeling whole. She said she thought our relationship was the answer, she thought our daughter was the answer, and then she thought her business would completely fill that void. She said she doesn't know how to be with our daughter. When our daughter was a baby, everything was easier, that our daughter would get excited when she came home from work, that no matter what she did or didn't do, she had our daughter's love. But she's older now and barely seems to like being in the same room as her and clings to me. I asked if she's considered that maybe our daughter's hurting from her criticism and broken promises.

My wife feels she's doing better than her parents. She said all our daughter knows is the grandpa and grandma who adore her over FaceTime. She doesn't know what they were like. Her childhood was staying in a child's place, doing what was expected of you, representing the family, and attitudes weren't tolerated. There wasn't a problem they couldn't solve with a belt. My wife said she doesn't believe in a belt as discipline, but she doesn't know how to be with our daughter and fears she's aggressive when communicating, so she leaves our daughter to me. She doesn't feel she's good as a mother to an older child or with expressing personal feelings. She said I knew what her parents were like. She's right.

My in-laws ran an unforgiving household. My wife was pretty much a latchkey kid. My Phil was always working, and my mill was busy with her community engagements. Feelings were compared to complaining, and there were certain expectations of my wife. I was 17 and my wife was 19 when we had our daughter. Of course the circumstances weren't ideal, but my in-laws made you feel their disapproval. There wasn't support to be found from them. They told my wife that if she was grown enough to make a baby, then she was grown enough to take on the responsibility. on her own. My in-laws have mellowed out a lot now, but my wife is no contact with them.

She used her business to pay off their house, and that was that. I'm the buffer between them. I'm accustomed to being my wife's protector. That was always our dynamic, especially during the pregnancy, when everyone had commentary, were comedians, or when guys would talk about her. Looking back, I think that's part of why I made excuses for her. actions with our daughter. I told my wife that I'm in love with her, but our daughter can't be at the expense of our relationship. We're at a crossroads. Something needed to change. Counseling isn't an option anymore. It's happening for our daughter and me. I want for us to come through this as a family. If she refuses counseling, I'd respect her decision, but her answer would

give me my answer on what I needed to do for the best of our daughter. We'd have to separate for the time being. My wife said if it's between counseling or losing our family, then she chooses counseling. She wants to keep working on our marriage and reconnecting as a family. We're not props. I asked if this was what she really wanted. If we do this, it can't be her showing up in word only but looking for any reason to skip out. She said what we built means something to her, and losing that has become more real to her now. I talked with our daughter about her feelings on counseling too. I didn't just want to randomly throw an appointment on her.

She was pretty open to the idea. I think it's because she's close with my parents and she knows they do counseling. My wife and I are officially in counseling. We're trying a conjoint therapy approach for right now. It's a new experience prior to this, my wife was never big on counseling, but she has been showing up. She hasn't flaked. There has been some improvement with my wife and daughter. My wife has pulled back on criticism and asking our daughter questions. Recently, we went to an amusement park as a family, and they had a good time together on some rides. My wife asked to

pair with our daughter on a few games too. It was the first time in a long time I saw them share a laugh. Nothing's perfect. We're in the early stages. I know my wife and daughter's relationship will be a long road. I know how it pans out isn't up to me, but I'm here to support our daughter and whatever she needs. I'd quote the future holds, but I want to be hopeful for my family. Maybe it's not too late. I want the best for everyone involved. Our daughter will be starting middle school soon, and I told my wife that she'll need both of us. I'm hoping this road isn't the end of my family. I want us to have to come through this together. When I chose a life with her, it wasn't because we were having a baby, so let's stick together. It was because I love her and

want to be with her. I want to make this work. Thank you to everyone again. I appreciate the support. It's much appreciated. Next story, started having a relationship with an older woman, but she constantly wants to hook up at random times and buys me expensive gifts. When I finally tried to break up with her, she completely lost it. I first met her when I took a part-time job at a local small business she owns, which I no longer work at for unrelated reasons. She had been very openly hitting on me for several months before, but I didn't reciprocate, even though I did find her attractive. due to a combination of shyness and obliviousness. I'm not very good with women and had never been in a relationship before.

Eventually she pretty much outright asked me if I wanted to stop by her place one night and we wound up having segs for the first time. This relationship has been going on for a while since then, but there's a lot of things I'm finding that are really weird and off-putting even aside from the age gap itself. First of all, she constantly wants to do sexual stuff with me at random time. For example, back when I was still working for her but after our relationship had started, she would constantly call me to her office just to ask me if I wanted to make out or invite me to feel her up.

She also trying a Sanji with me regularly even though I usually don't respond very well since it's something I feel very awkward doing. She sometimes gets really upset when I'm not interested too, which makes it even more awkward for me. Also, she's constantly getting me very expensive gifts which I guess sounds nice in theory, but actually makes me feel really awkward, since I generally try very hard to be self-sufficient. For example, one time she bought a fancy new laptop because she heard that I've been using the same old one for several years, which put me in kind of a weird position since I didn't want to get rid of my old laptop but also didn't want to hurt her feelings. Finally, she's always texting me late at night asking me to come over to her place and FCK her and she sometimes gets

really upset if I tell her I have other plans or I'm just tired. It's a 45-minute walk from my dorm to her place so it's not just something I can do casually. She's also constantly texting me drunk and rants about her ex-husband and how he stole the best years of her life and about men in general and how they're stupid and shallow and how she's glad that I'm smart enough not to waste time with trashy college sluts. Like I said before, I've never been in a relationship before, so I'm not really sure how much of the weird feeling in my gut is caused by actual red flags and how much is caused by the fact that I'm just not used to relationship stuff in general. Can anyone help me out here?

Comments where OPP has replied, comment one, sugar mama isn't getting enough from her sugar baby. This isn't a normal healthy relationship, if that's what you're wondering. Oop, what's unhealthy about it? Comment two, she likes you because she can control you. She buys you things so that she can demand your time. You feel indebted to her because of the things she has given you. She tells you when you two are going to hook up. She tells you when you can touch her.

I'd say she gets off knowing you're so inexperienced and young. She likes having some younger guy at her beck and call. I would say you're not in a relationship, at least not a boyfriend slash girlfriend or partner relationship. You've entered into a sugar mama slash sugar baby relationship. I repeat, you are not in a relationship with this woman. Oop, do you really think that's what's going on here? That sounds really disturbing. Then again, a lot of people here seem to be saying similar things.

Comment three, I mean, it's 100% what's happening. She is newly out of a divorce. She wants a booty call, that's it. She's probably really resentful towards men her own age right now and wants a partnership that she can control completely. So, she gives you gifts so that you feel indebted to her. Then, when you don't want to do something you remind her of her ex-husband, and how men suck, and she blows up at you. Trust me. You have a sugar mama.

That's why this whole thing seems weird. Now that you know, you can decide what you want to do. Are you okay with continuing now that you know this isn't a real relationship? Or would you feel more comfortable entering into a genuine relationship with someone close to your own age with less baggage? Update, okay, so I initially posted an update on this yesterday, but it was deleted for being too soon after my first post and the situation has changed slightly since then. Hopefully this is a better time to post. After having some time to collect my thoughts, I decided that the best decision would be to break things off since we obviously had different things we wanted in the relationship. I originally

planned on doing this when I next saw her that's not how things wound up playing out. Three nights ago after I made my first post, I got a very explicit text from her telling me she wanted to see me in half an hour and all the things she wanted me to do to her. I politely told her I wasn't interested and as usual she started to get insistent and kind of upset. Since it seemed like the path of least resistance I just told her then and there that that, while I had enjoyed our time together, I wanted something different in a relationship and wanted to break it off. She asked why and I just told her that it wasn't working and I didn't want to get in a long conversation about it. Maybe that was a mistake but a lot of people in the

last thread were telling me not to try and engage too much with her and that advice made sense to me. For the next several hours, she kept sending me messages asking me what was going on, why didn't I like her anymore, if there was anything she could do, etc., and I just kept telling her that I enjoyed what we had, but I was just ready to move on. Eventually the messages stopped and I assumed that the whole thing was over. The next day I awoke to find a ton of messages on my phone from her ranting about how she thought I was different from other guys, but I'm just another stupid shallow asshole who chases after college horrors because I'm too emotionally stunted to handle a relationship with a real woman like her. A few hours later,

to my shock and horror, she tried to ambush me when I was on the way to my dorm for lunch, she knows where I live, sadly, and started laying into me about how I was a shallow, immature ungrateful asshole and she never wanted to see me again. A few hours later she started sending me more nasty messages, so I decided to block her number. She later cornered me again when I was trying to get dinner and demanded to know why I hadn't responded to any of her messages. I told her that I had blocked her number and did not want to talked to her any further and she went off on me again and said that I was an immature loser who'll never find anyone else who's willing to touch my tiny dick again. This really got to me since I do

have a lot of trouble with women. Yesterday she ambushed me yet again when I was trying to get lunch and started laying into me about how I was too shallow, stupid and ungrateful to appreciate a woman like her how she hopes I die alone and I just told her that I was going to contact the authorities, I realized that there was no other option at this point, and walked off. A few hours later, after informing campus security and the local police, I temporarily unblocked her number and sent her a message saying that I had contacted the authorities and that there was going to be trouble if she continued her behavior. She sent me a reply saying that I was being a cowardly piece of shit and I blocked her again.

She made no attempt to make further contact with me since then. Hopefully the situation has at least been resolved now although part of me is still uneasy just cause of how far she's escalated so far. I'm not gonna lie, this has taken a fairly serious emotional toll on me. One of the few women who's ever showed any interest in me, who I used to like and have some amount of respect for suddenly turned into a complete psycho who hates my guts and some of what she was saying did hit close to home at times. I don't doubt for a second that I made the right decision here,

but part of me just wants to understand why she went so crazy so fast so I don't wind up in this situation again. Sorry if that sounds melodramatic, but that's just where I'm at right now.