Originally Posted by Portis
Married with kids male here. The obvious answer as has already been mentioned, is to try and ride early mornings if you can. You probably can't, but this is what i do. Get the riding in while everyone is sleeping and you are never even missed.
Honestly, like most of us, you have found some form of comfort or therapy in your cycling. That is the part that shouldn't be lost. If your wife truly cares about your happiness, she will understand that it provides you with pleasure and a well earned diversion from daily life.
It doesn't sound like you are out of control with your riding, in terms of sacrificing family time. So i would suggest finding the time to talk to your wife and tell her, "look the last thing i want to do is create problems but I want you to know how important this is to me and would like to work TOGETHER to find a way to work this out."
Hopefully, this will give her some feeling of being involved in the process and will help her let down her guard. If she digs in and says to hell with you then you have a bad wife in my opinion. One thing is for sure, it is ALWAYS a bad road to go down, when you start comparing job duties. Because both of you will be partially right and partially wrong and neither are very good about admitting the wrong part.
Accepted Answer
However, I will entertain others. I do the early morning rides on weekends but it is difficult for me during the week. For one morning traffic where I live is scary for some reason and there are only a few days a year when this will work with my job schedule. But I like the way you explained the importance of cycling. That is dead on the way I feel about it and my wife is usually a reasonable person to deal with.