SINGAPORE: A woman took to social media asking for help after she found her new husband to be extremely disrespectful. In an anonymous post to popular confessions page NUSWhispers, the woman said she got married not too long ago and moved in with her husband. “However after moving in together I found that my husband is an extremely disrespectful person. We work from home in the same study room and as someone who loves to chat, during the day I often initiate conversations with my husband but he’s never paying attention to me. He’s always deep in his work and even when I’m talking he is still looking at his computer and typing away”.
She explained that even after raising the issue multiple times, her husband says his work requires a lot of concentration and he is not able to respond to her immediately each time she speaks to him. “He says we can allocate time during the day to talk, like during lunch or tea breaks, but not when he’s working. However, I’m someone who needs to get something off my chest right away so what he proposed is unacceptable to me. I find such behavior so rude and am contemplating a divorce. We don’t have a kid yet and the stakes are low now”, the woman wrote. She added that all things considered, despite his behaviour of ignoring her, he was a responsible husband.
The woman asked netizens if she should proceed with the divorce. Netizens who commented on her post felt that she was unreasonable and suggested there could be other underlying issues.
One netizen commented: ” ‘Other than this ignoring behavior, he’s actually a responsible husband. Should I go ahead with it?’ No. You also say that he’s a responsible husband. Personally, I mostly don’t like to chat or be distracted when I am working either. I actually don’t understand why you need to insist that he talks to you when he’s working.
These days, I also don’t go to campus every day and work from home some days. My wife is 100% WFH. Interestingly, my wife is actually the one who gets annoyed when I distract her while she’s working. She tells me off and I diam diam (keep quiet). You can either learn from me or you can consider doing one of the following 2 strategies: (i) ask him to go back to his office to work, so that you will not be there to distract him and he can give you his full attention when he’s back from work; (ii) if things do not improve, go for marriage counselling before contemplating a divorce.
The fact that you are contemplating divorce over what is frankly a trivial matter suggests that there is an underlying problem in your relationship. It’s likely not about whether the husband talks to you while he’s working. I suspect that you feel like you are not getting enough attention. I would recommend that you think more deeply about the root of the problem and have an honest discussion with the husband about the underlying unhappiness. Marriage is hard and it doesn’t work by accident. Both parties need to work at it. My wife and I have a wonderful marriage. Again not by accident. We both worked at it for many years. All the best!”