While I was drowning in diapers and midnight feedings, my husband found a bold new way to say, “Not my problem.” He didn’t use words. He used a sign. From the outside, we looked like a Pinterest-perfect family.
White picket fence. A swing set in the backyard. Our five-year-old’s chalk drawings decorated the driveway like little masterpieces.
We even had matching Adirondack chairs lined up on the porch, as if we actually sat there watching sunsets together. But let me tell you the truth. I live with a man who calls himself my husband, but in every way that counts, I’m a single mom with a roommate.
My name is Jenna, and I’m currently on maternity leave with our second daughter. I haven’t slept more than two hours straight in weeks. I breastfeed at 2 a.m., 4 a.m., and then again at 6 a.m.
I clean, cook, and fold tiny onesies with one hand while bouncing a fussy baby on my hip with the other. And while I’m helping our five-year-old color inside the lines, I’m also mentally calculating if I have enough milk thawed for the next feeding. And Rick?
He works from home “in tech.” That’s how he describes it. From what I can tell, it involves three emails a day, endless YouTube videos, and muting himself on Zoom to laugh at memes. But the part that makes my blood boil?
He installed a Do Not Disturb sign on the office door. Not as a joke. Not once for a meeting.
It’s permanent. Screwed in like a cruel punchline I was never in on. “Babe, I’m working,” he said the first time I knocked while the baby screamed in my arms and our toddler tried to climb the bookshelf.
“You know the sign’s up.”
I knew. Oh, I knew. But I didn’t know what would happen when I stopped knocking.
And that’s where things started to change. The first time I knocked, it was chaos. The baby was screaming, our toddler had an accident on the rug, and I was this close to a breakdown.
Rick cracked the door just an inch and peered out like I was the mailman interrupting his game. “Can’t you see the sign?” he said, pointing like it was sacred. “You have to respect boundaries, babe.”
I blinked.
“Wait, are you… serious?”
“Dead serious,” he replied, already closing the door. “Boundaries, Jenna.”
I stood there in stunned silence, baby wailing on my shoulder, and the smell of urine soaking into the carpet. That moment?
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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