Being a mother to six-year-old twins brings the kind of exhaustion you can only understand if you’ve ever experienced it first hand. I don’t say I didn’t like it, it’s just everything revolved around feeding them, getting them dressed like a hundred times a day, and making sure the house stayed as clean as as neat as possible.
I recall running on pure adrenalin and zero sleep and having a hard time holding it together. So when my husband decided he couldn’t do it any longer and needed an escape, it broke me completely.
It all happened during one of those evenings when you feel like everything goes south out of the blue. I remember sitting on the floor, with one of the girls clinging to my shirt and the other one being in the bounces while both of them teething and screaming uncontrollably. The sink was piled in dirty dishes, the dinner was basically boiling dry on the stove, and I was dizzy for not having anything to eat since morning.
And that’s when Brandon came in, and I thought to myself, “Thanks God, some help on the way. Finally!” Well, instead of taking at least one of the girls, he started screaming, telling me the girls’ crying could be heard from the driveway.
I just ignored his words, and asked him to keep an eye on the twins until I got their milk ready, but he said his day at work was tough enough already. He then walked past me and that was when I saw a huge green duffel bag by the front door.
It turned out he organized a four-day fishing trip with his buddies without consulting me or at least telling me about it beforehand. When I asked him what I would be doing all by myself with two babies for four days, he said, “they’re just babies, you’ll manage.” When I told him that taking care of two six-month-old babies all at once and all by myself was impossible, he just grabbed the bag and said, “Well, you wanted to be a mother, didn’t you. Now act like it.”
The following four days were completely consumed by survival. He did not text or phone once to check on his children. At three in the morning of the second night, I was on the nursery floor, eating a stale granola bar while the babies cried all around me. The very next afternoon, he posted a photo from his boat with the caption, “Finally getting some peace and quiet.” I immediately took a screenshot of the post.
My sister, Summer, found out about it through her social media feed and called me right away. The minute she learned that I had been completely deserted with my six-month-old twins, she came to my place with groceries in less than thirty minutes. She did not judge my mess of a home or the pile of laundry; she helped wash bottles, held them while I took a long bath, and cooked me a hot meal.
And honestly, she was rather confused about Brandon leaving me for so long just like that, because not once I complained about him or my marriage. But then I had it enough of pretending.
I finally told the truth: Brandon hadn’t changed a single diaper since the twins were born. He’d helped out maybe twice at night, then spent the rest of his evenings complaining about the noise and the mess. Summer asked why I’d been keeping it a secret. I admitted I was just scared of what people would think about my marriage. Of course she called me crazy.
Later that afternoon, Brandon’s mother, Dawn, called. I stopped acting like everything was fine and told her what was really going on with me and her son. She was shocked. She asked when I’d last slept two hours in a row or seen a doctor. When I told her I missed my appointment because Brandon had a work meeting, she said she was coming over right away.
While my sister helped with the girls, I logged into our bank account and got another slap in the face: Brandon had taken two thousand dollars out of our emergency fund to pay for the cabin, boat rental, and gear for his trip. This was the same week he told me we couldn’t afford a babysitter so I could get some sleep.
Dawn arrived around dinner with food and stayed the night. She made no excuses for her son. With the two of them handling the night feedings, I finally got six straight hours of sleep. When I woke up, I knew things couldn’t go back to how they were. I didn’t write a list of complaints; instead, I wrote down what needed to change if Brandon and I were going to stay married.
Brandon returned from his boys’ fishing trip tanned and all smiles. But the second he saw the three of us sitting there waiting, the look on his face completely changed.
He asked what was going on, and I told him to sit down. As soon as he saw the screenshot, he got mad and accused me of trying to embarrass him. I told him I just gave his mom an honest answer when she asked if I had been sleeping. He tried to write off the whole trip like it was “just four days,” but I looked him right in the eye and told him it was never about the four days.
I slid my terms across the table: mandatory counseling, an actual 50/50 split with the kids every day, putting that two grand right back into our savings, and no more acting like he was doing his part when he wasn’t. He got defensive and said I embarrassed him by dragging his mom into this. I told him the real embarrassment was that he’d been living like a single guy while letting me do everything.
He looked over at his duffel bag by the stairs and asked if I was kicking him out. I told him he could go stay with his mom while we worked through counseling, and he could use that time to decide if he actually wanted to be a dad or just like the idea of it. Then I walked over, grabbed his bag, and handed it right to him.
“I packed that bag because you think you can just bail whenever things get tough,” I told him. Now he has to figure out if he actually wants to stay and put in the work.
He grabbed his bag and walked out without a word. Things aren’t fixed, at least not yet. But for the first time since the girls were born, I’m not carrying this whole marriage on my back. I am completely done covering for a guy who runs the second life gets hard.
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Bored Daddy
Love and Peace