My husband, James, keeps berating me for not cooking elaborate meals like his friend Oliver’s wife, Charlotte. She’s a wonderful woman—a true culinary artist. I won’t argue; her dishes are exquisite, but they take hours to prepare. The kitchen is her passion, her domain, where she crafts meals from dawn till dusk. And me? I’m juggling work, our child, and the house, and his words cut like a knife.
Charlotte is on maternity leave, living what many mothers would call a dream. Her parents, though divorced, adore their grandson and happily take him in the mornings. Grandparents take turns pushing the pram, feeding the baby, and delivering him home by evening. Charlotte wakes up, hands him over to her doting family, slips back under the covers, then tidies up at her leisure. She has the entire day to create culinary masterpieces—no distractions, no demands, just pure freedom. She experiments, tries new recipes, and every evening, their table is set with something extraordinary. Her family makes it possible, and I’m genuinely happy for her.
But James doesn’t see it that way. He looks at Charlotte and sees perfection—something he expects me to match. *”She’s on maternity leave with a baby, yet she manages everything!”* he snaps. *”Meanwhile, you rush through meals, cooking the same old things.”* His words sting like slaps. Where am I supposed to find five or six hours a day for cooking? I work full-time, then collect our daughter, Emily, from nursery. By the time we get home, it’s past six. I scrape together quick meals—roast chicken, jacket potatoes, pasta with a simple salad. It keeps us fed, but to James, it’s just another reason to scoff.
If I tried making elaborate dishes like Charlotte’s, dinner wouldn’t be ready until midnight, and we’d all go to bed hungry. But James doesn’t see that. All he says is, *”Charlotte surprises Oliver with something new every night, but you don’t seem to care.”* His admiration for her cooking feels like an indictment of my failures. I’m tired of defending myself. If Charlotte had a maternity leave like most—where you barely have time to shower—she’d be heating up frozen meals too, and Oliver wouldn’t complain.
I’m happy for Charlotte and Oliver. Good for her, turning her maternity leave into a gourmet adventure. But it hurts that James constantly compares me to her. He acts blind to how different our lives are. I work full days, then rush to collect Emily. Charlotte’s on leave, with grandparents handing her back a perfectly content baby by bedtime. Of *course* she has more time. I’d love that kind of maternity leave, but our parents aren’t queuing up to babysit. They love Emily—just not enough to take her all day.
James won’t let it go. *”At least on weekends, you could make something special,”* he grumbles. Am I not human? Don’t I deserve rest? Five days a week, I’m grafting at work, then I’m supposed to spend my weekends slaving over the stove to please him? Sometimes, I wonder if he’s looking for an excuse to leave. Does he truly not realise how unfair he’s being? Or does he *want* to hurt me? I’m exhausted from proving I’m doing my best. I just want him to see *me*—not Charlotte—but his wife, fighting to keep this family afloat.
