I think its due to the author's projections, he's trying to portray himself as a good husband and father, made it seem like his emotional distance was at the hands of his wife, and i think the husband is stripped of a lot of character because the author wanted to diminish his flaws. Also feels like he's justifying cheating.
I feel the same way. Not to say that what the mom is doing now isn’t fucked up but not helping your wife during pregnancy and not advocating for her is so messed. His doormat personality doesn’t only affect him, like in the flashback where he apologized to the man who literally bumped into her. I think that it also fed into her victim mentality where she feels like it’s unfair and he just doesn’t understand.
Yes the wife doesn’t understand her daughter but he literally didn’t even know that she was skipping school for so long and he never tried to reach out or to understand anything. Not a fan of how the author is brushing over these established events (prob cause he doesn’t think of it as that bad) in order to paint him as the only one trying to be better
The women in this story are so one dimensional it’s insane. You have ‘abusive wife’ and ‘sexy saviour neighbour’.