DP didn't come back

@ThickSkinnedSoWhat
Where does the OP say that they've only been together for 5 months? I can't find that anywhere in her posts.

It's called impulsivity and is an assessed behaviour in adhd diagnosis. ADHD is not "normal behaviour but could be controlled if you tried harder or didn't give way to your feelings". It's a fucking disorder, that is, behaviours are impossible to manage by sheer strength of mind and good judgement.

Poor OP I hope they are having a wonderful day

“It is what it is” - sounds like a dosser, mumper, immature twt.

Seriously this is a five month relationship.

He isn't responsible for the running of your household, that includes your children and the cat.. He shouldn't even be around your children alone at this stage!

Ffs you've been dating 5 months he should even have met your kids let alone be left in the house with them!
And everytime there's a serious case review when a kid is harmed at the hands of a partner their mother has left them alone with a new boyfriend

I didn't realize they only had been dating 5 months. That completely changes my mindset. Why are the kids even acquainted with him at this point let alone being put to bed and going on holiday with him?

Because the OPs house isn't his 'home' they've only been together 5 months and don't live together?

You are not being unreasonable! I’m struggling to understand how he went to his mother’s at 10am to get a few bits and still wasn’t home at 5pm and then thought it was a good time to meet a friend for a pint when he knew there was prep to do for the trip 🤷🏻‍♀️

@ohfacksake I just wanted to give you a shout-out and say, I have inattentive ADHD (diagnosed in my 40s) and it takes me facking ages to pack. It always takes a whole day, regardless of whether I am going for one day or two weeks. The need for perfection is ridiculous. And let’s not even go there with walking into a room and forgetting why I did that. (That probably takes up half the time!) This despite epic lists curated over years for every type and length of holiday.

If I didn’t take ADHD meds on any other day of the year, I would still take them on packing days.

Just saying, for all the people out there saying it’s a 10-min affair to pack for a night, there’s another bunch of us out there who hear and feel you.

Anyhoo, hope you got sorted before 1am and got out the door almost on time this morning and are now relaxing somewhere nice.

If this was a reverse and a man was telling his gf (not dp) to go to his house, pack his bag for a trip and organise his kids, everybody would already be in a chorus of LTB and they would be right. It's controlling. I'd like to know what the kids dad say about a bf of 5 months meeting his children, much less being abandoned with a man they hardly know, put to bed by him and having their personal belongings touched. If it was me I'd be very unimpressed.

I don't think you're BU per se. Sounds like things have just got on top of you. Have things been bubbling for a while and you just blew?
Take a breath and don't beat yourself up over it. 🤗

I don’t agree. It comes across that he was perfectly happy to help OP in the evening. She was working and in meetings all day anyway apparently so he may as well have been at his mums.
OP wanted him to go and do her children’s packing by himself, that is the unreasonable request Imo. He said he didn’t know what to pack and this is when OP blew up and stormed out.
I said no I'd rather him get the 5.30 bus so he can start with the packing and I can help finish when I got back from swimming lessons.
Why would a 5 month bf go to her house and start packing for her kids to stay with their dad?? It’s bizarre.
The partner and OP were back in OPs at the same time as OP picked him up. They could have just packed together then.

@Sissynova you've missed the point I was making. Putting aside her reasons and the impracticalities of packing in advance, he said he'd do XYZ (help her pack/get the bus/meet her at swimming) then didn't. He's unreliable, which IMHO is a massive problem in relationships.

Leave your DP to get himself organised and if he forgets things, that's his fault and you don't need to compensate for his lack of forward thinking.

The whole point of the thread is that OP needed her DP to help her organise herself!! I suspect he's quite capable of organising himself.

Just how long does it take to make two rounds of sandwiches and bung some fruit, a protein bar/crisps and a drink into lunch boxes? I'd say 15 minutes on a go slow day.
School bags likewise.
It's easy to fall back on a diagnosis nowadays. Some people are just disorganised and you might be one of them. Everything doesn't need a diagnosis to be the excuse.
Write a list which you tick off.
Leave your DP to get himself organised and if he forgets things, that's his fault and you don't need to compensate for his lack of forward thinking.
The lunch boxes could be made the night before and put in the fridge.
You're making a mountain out of a molehill.

This^ when my sister and myself were young kids my mum did this but she fucked off for the entire weekend and me and my sister were inconsolable and for a long time blamed ourselves. And my dad had literally done nothing wrong my mum was and is just very overdramatic please go back for your kids sake don't mess their little heads up like my mum did with myself and my sister.

Fwiw I don't think you're being unreasonable at all. He said he would be back to share the responsibility of packing and he wasn't. He knew he needed to be, but he prioritised other things which had a negative impact on you, but not on him.
Also, you shouldn't be making packed lunches for your DC if they're in their dads care, that's his job.
It sounds like your picking up the slack for both your DC father and your partner.

I have adhd and would have reacted exactly the same way as you. I need someone else to help me manage things like this even if its just sorting stuff for one night. Yes you probably overreacted but dont listen to all the people who are telling you youre being crazy to stress over packing for one night away. Thats them and their privilege talking - oh to have a working executive function!

However, dp has also been a thoughtless dick and has been unsupportive

There are an awful lot of MN posters who will automatically assume the man is in the wrong even though they have to jump through many hoops to justify this.

In this case, it sounds like DP was a bit flaky around communication and it was annoying to have to give him a lift but nothing that justified the subsequent fall out.

If OP was taking DC out to swimming lessons after work, I'm not sure when the packing was expected to start and what she expected DP to be able to do without her input anyway. I doubt he knows what the children take to their dad's (because he doesn't live there and they are not his children; not because he's a useless man) or where it would be if he could make a guess that they might need something like a change of clothes and PJs (because he doesn't live there and they are not his children, not because he's a useless man).

Absolute peak MN is them ignoring everything that has happened in the situation clearly.

Where does it say he wants op to do his packing. They are at her house where he doesn't live, so more likely that its her and her kids stuff he doesn't know what to do with. But yes, despite only being together 5 months he should of course be responsible for 0p and her dc and he just needs to recognise ITS ALL HIS FAULT and op can be absolved of everything. Absolutely peak MN.

For someone with adhd that is a monumental set of tasks and writing a list is quite frankly laughable.

I use the packing suitcase scenario we trying to explain ADHD

Think about your brain as having 2 rooms side by side with doors connecting the rooms.
In one room you have people. The other room is empty. Each person is an idea, thought, memory you have ever had.

You shout out to the room with the people in that you need the people who represent all the stages of packing a suitcase.
For a NT person those people come through to the empty room, line up in order of how you pack a suitcase and you work through each thought process

For someone with ADHD both rooms are full all of the time. You make a shout out that you need to pack a suitcase and everyone runs around. Some of those people really do know how to pack a suitcase but they don’t know where they should stand and Another One Bites The Dust is playing so they decide to have a dance and the other thought processes needed get stuck in the door with those people who are memories of when you went horse riding once or they are already in the room they need to be in but the waiting for bf to come back thought processes are taking up the space they should be standing in so they get bored and wander off.

It is exhausting having to think and recall anything with so much noise going on in your head.

So it might only be 10 minutes to
pack a suitcase if you have everything to hand and can think logically but hours for someone with ADHD.
As for leaving her children, sometimes you just have to remove yourself to calm yourself otherwise there is so much in your brain that is shouting to be heard and adding more and more to it feels like your head is about to explode

Haven't RTFT but am quietly cackling to myself at the posters who declare that packing for one night is no big deal. Not everyone feels this way.

I have to start writing a list several days ahead just to feel relatively calm and in control. Then control rapidly goes out the window. I lose the list, ignore the list, forget to mark things off the list. Any or all of these can occur. I empty my bag and repack it multiple times, rummaging around for things I've marked off as packed, but find I haven't. My brain genuinely goes into meltdown and I am gripped with anxiety at the idea of forgetting something. It is so hard to explain to people who don't feel this way and who just think you're being dramatic or stupid or lazy or immature. My whole life becomes about packing a bag. I have no capacity to concentrate on much else. It really is that bad!!

Can I ask a question? Was it because your partner said to do the packing together, but left it til the last minute, and then wanted your help with his packing? In spite of the fact you had been sorting everything else? Your packing, kids and cat etc? Was is that, that sent you over the edge?

Did you feel that he needed your input to get his packing right? Has he been know for forgetting things?

My ex husband used to regularly be away for work. But he also regularly forgot things (once it was his wallet, others times no underpants or T-shirts in a hot county, left his luggage in a taxi in Asia, his iPad on a plane). I always was the one who had to sort these things out for him. So when we went on holiday together I felt impelled to make sure he sorted his shit. But he was a last minute man.

Eventually, I had to leave him to it. I sorted my stuff and the family stuff in plenty of time, made my own lists, did my stuff early. He was only responsible for him and also responsible for his own fallout. We once had to go back home on the way to the airport because he didn’t have his passport. I even got to the stage I would have got on the plane without him.

So to save yourself 10 years or more of stress - He’s an adult, let him be an adult and he can learn the consequences of not adulting.

I have adhd and it isn’t that packing for one night only takes 10 minutes or you should plan more it is the fact that the plan for bf to come back at a certain time and he didn’t means you get stuck. Nothing can get done until bf has got back has happened. Your brain won’t move on

Your brain can’t think of the next thing till the bf has returned. It’s like if you have a 2pm appointment, you have to be somewhere for 2pm but because you know you will forget all about it you sit there stuck waiting for the time to leave for the appointment.