Wife seems to expect too much?

[someguy69]

My wife and I have been married for almost five years. I am the bread-winner, I commute an hour away from home for work, she works from home teaching voice lessons, and also runs a small children's theatre company.

 

When she has a theatre production, she expects me to always be there to help out. This means that I often have to leave work early, battling the rush hour traffic to make it to the show to be there to support her. This theatre company is her baby, barely breaks even, and often costs more than it brings in. She also usually needs to use my credit card to pay the deposits on rentals and reservations, and I don't always get paid back.

 

Yesterday we had couple-friends whom we hadn't seen in a few years come in from out of town and asked my wife if they could spend the night at our place as their original plans didn't pan out. My wife had also scheduled a rehearsal at our house last night, so when I got home I had to entertain our friends during the rehearsal, then immmediately after the rehearsal she had to teach a voice lesson (while kids were still waiting to be picked up), and she also let a couple of the theatre kids spend the night as the performance was the next day.

 

So, in the morning, she mentions that I don't need to come until the evening show, and she had loaded our pick-up truck with some extra set pieces that didn't fit into other vehicles -- but our truck was full of trash that needed to go to the dump. Hence, had to drive these set pieces in the morning, drive back home, drive to the dump, and had to clean out the truck bed so that it was clean enough to be useful to load up the full set tonight. I also had other things to attend to, such as walking and feeding our dogs.

 

Unfortunately, before the afternoon show, she had a bunch of requests for me to bring things she had forgotten -- but our guests had not left yet, and they had two young children that they had to deal with and I'm not good at rushing people out of our house, so there wasn't any way I could get everything all done plus get the forgotten items to her in time for the show, so she angrily told me to nevermind and that she'd make due or get some alternatives, etc.

 

So now she is all pissy and upset that I "let her down", and hopes that I had a good day, and hopes that I had fun with "your friends" (these are our friends, no more mine than hers). She's also trying to get me to account for every minute of that day that made it so that I wasn't able to do her bidding.

 

Is there any good way to deal with this sort of thing without looking like the bad guy?

[DN]

Yes, tell her that you are not her gofer, that you already helped out more than any reasonable person should expect and she needs to learn to be grateful.

 

And I have run a theatre group. I am currently directing a play for an adult theatre group, and run classes and performances for young people, so I know of what I speak. I would never expect my wife to help as much as your wife expects you to, and she does a lot already.

[Snowtown]

She sounds like she was being unreasonable to me , Jeez I'm lucky if I can get my husband to mow the lawn each week ! Let alone help me with any of my stuff .

[Ms Darcy]

You need to lay out your expectations of helping. Be clear and stand your ground. You teach people how to treat you so don't teach her she can do anything with you.