Do you tell your dh *everything*?

[mollipops]

Just wondered if I am the only one who feels like they keep certain things from their dh; sometimes just to keep the peace IYKWIM, other times because it just doesn't seem important, either to me or to him. I know there are times when I tell him things and he doesn't really listen anyway!

There are sometimes mischievous things the kids do during the day that I don't share as I know he will only get upset and it has already been long dealt with; prices of haircuts/clothes/shoes that I shave a little off if he asks; crazy little thoughts and ideas I get that he wouldn't understand, but I tell my girlfriends, (who do!)

I hope this doesn't sound as if I am completely secretive and we never talk, cos we do, and we very seldom disagree, and have the same sense of humour and pov on most things. But there seems like some things he just doesn't need to know...anyone else feel the same way?

[PamT]

My dh doesn't know that I have a sexy male hairdresser and I don't always tell him what the kids have done wrong - no point making trouble for the sake of it.

[SoupDragon]

Oh, I agree completely!! DS1 has even learnt the phrase "we won't tell daddy about this, will we?"

[jac34]

I tell small lies about unimportant things like, as you said, the cost of things, I knock a few quid off here and there.
Dh also knows I like my men dark(in looks not in mood), so when a fit, young, black man joined our team at work, I told DH he was gay because I knew it would worry him a bit.

[WideWebWitch]

I do tell dp everything, unless it's so incredibly trivial as to not be worth mentioning.

[webmum]

I tell him everything, actually I call him ten times a day at work to tell him about something dd has done or said (she's our first one, i know I will grow out of it!!), but I don't tell him how I really feel about his mum coming to stay with us as he would not (quite understandably) understand. So I suffer in silence about that. I think he knows justa bout everything else about me (even when my period is due!!)

[Scatterbrain]

Of course I don't tell him everything !! A girl has to have some secrets !!

[CookieMonster]

Although I don't have any secrets from dh as such, there's plenty that I don't tell him because he is not a 'details' man and gets very impatient when I start telling a complicated story - he just wants the edited highlights. As a result our conversations are fairly limited and I really wish there was someone with whom I could just ramble on to my heart's content ...

[oxocube]

As little as possible

[threeangels]

My dh and I have a pretty open relationship. Not saying we tell every little thing of course. What I do tend to keep from him most (unless he asks) is when I go and spend money eating out. I tend to do this a lot.

[elliott]

Yes. Except my mumsnet nickname

[EmmaTMG]

I just shave a few pound off the cost of things here and there and I'm sooooo pleased to see I'm not the only one, I always wondered if I was being silly but it's obviously quite normal among us females.
Apart from that I tell him everything even though he never bl**dy listens!!

[jasper]

of course not

[tigermoth]

no no no no no no NO!!

[SueW]

I also tell DH everything but have the problem that he doesn't listen to a lot of it and then thinks I haven't told him.

[janh]

I think something happens to their ears (or brains) on the way home from work. They wouldn't last 5 minutes if they "listened" at work the way they do at home!

[Lindy]

No way!! He wouldn't listen or be interested anyway - and it's always useful if something crops up & he accuses me of not telling him, I can quite easily say,'of course I told you so & so, you just never listen'!!

[breeze]

I do not tell my dh everything, i always tell him how much things cost etc, i certainly do not tell him things that will bug at his brain, ie the dad i talk to at son play-school is an ex , i also lie a little too, ie have been rushed off my feet all day, when true is most of it has been spent on the computer .

[susanmt]

I probably dont tell him everything, but I dont consciously keep things from him!

[genia]

Not only do I not tell dh everything, I feel that I tell him little. He doesn't listen either which is dispiriting and makes me feel unwanted (sometimes). I get sick of talking to the side of his face when he is on the computer in the evenings and then I don't know if he has really heard what I am saying because he will not always acknowledge things. (At the moment I am going through a phase where I am thinking that if we had been behaving like we are at the moment towards each other when we met, we never would have got together). Like you CookieMonster, it would be nice to have someone to ramble on to. I guess one person is not enough and you need friends as well - it's just accepting this which is hard after having been fed the myth of the all-encompassing romantic relationship for years.

[Lara2]

Never!!!

[Eulalia]

Cookiemonster - I feel much better now knowing that my dh isn't the only one like this. My dh gets annoyed if I ramble in any way. Also if I am asking a question and I approach it in an indirect way he gets irritable or unless I give him exactly all the information he will just say "I don't know what you are talking about" very abruptly.

Sometimes I feel it would be nice for a bit of idle banter ... well I do get it from friends and here at Mumsnet of course ... just a man thing I suppose...

We don't seem to have much time for a lot of talk - I have to fit in the telling him about the children and my day straight after dinner otherwise he goes on the computer or falls asleep (or even both on occasion )

But to answer the original question no I don't either becuase it is too trivial or he just simply doesn't need to know.

[Chinchilla]

Same here. I see his mind wandering when I start to talk to him, and start speeding up to get my words out! When I talk to him, he never responds. When I say this, he says, 'You did not ask me a question.' But, when it is him talking, I have to respond, because it is polite! I can't win...

No, I don't tell him everything. Some things I will tell him if he asks, like if ds is wearing a new outfit. Otherwise, I keep quiet. Anyway, some things are too trivial, or take too much explaining. I also know a lot of things that I don't consider his business. Like secrets that friends have told me. He always asks things, and I just say, 'It is not my secret to tell.'

[iota]

We don't have secrets as such, but there's no way we could physically tell each other everything - there's not enough hours in the day. So when he tells me on a Thursday that his parents are coming to stay the next day, it's not because he was deliberately keeping it from me.
Then there was the time I saw a wide screen TV advertised in the paper and called his attention to it, and he casually announced that he'd already ordered one through the internet. I did ask at the time when he was going to get around to telling me - perhaps he was going to install it in the living room and see if I noticed

[miggy]

No, wouldnt be much point really. Tonight he was in at 9pm, we had dinner, then I started to tell him something really important about a house we are buying- at that point he took his phone out of his pocket and started fiddling with it. I pointed out that his attention for 2 minutes would be really nice but he just couldnt see the problem-men aarghhh!!!