This is a sensitive topic and I hope my words will be understood and taken well, and applied properly.
Let’s start with the positive aspects of this situation. The husband is getting up early to learn every day and his wife is in general supportive. Getting up early, having a seder hayom, a responsible daily schedule, is so important for everyone, and in general has a positive impact on people’s personal and interpersonal life.
It’s also wonderful that his eishes chayil admires her husband for this. Unfortunately, there are wives who distort even the good things their husbands do (and vice versa), complaining that (for instance), “Now that you’re getting up early, you’re too tired to help me later in the day,” or even, “You’re getting up early because you care about yourself — but what are you doing for me?”
In any relationship between two people, there are areas that belong to just one of them and not the other, and areas that they share. Getting up early to learn (as long as it doesn’t directly affect the spouse) falls in the husband’s zone. Other things, such as mealtimes, are in their shared zone. The wife can choose when to cook and how to cook, but when it comes to deciding when to serve and eat supper, it should be a joint decision.
Regarding the issue presented here, a couple’s connecting time definitely falls in the shared zone. That means that both spouses take each other into account; there’s no such thing as one of them making the decisions and the other having to just go along with it.
It’s a sensitive topic, of course, and that means that one has to be careful how to discuss it. However, there does have to be communication, even if it is hard (as the husband in this letter writes). Finding it difficult to discuss any topic is not an excuse for avoiding it.
