DH hates young children in our house

If he's happy to fuck off out of his house for umpteen years to avoid his kids then he can fuck off out of it while you have visitors. Personally I think you'd be better off if he fucked off permanently.

Ugh. Make him a pack up, give him some bus fare and send him out for the day
Then have a large glass of wine with your guests, belly dance, belly laugh, fill your bellies with treats and enjoy your day/s

How can you even love this man who disappeared from family life for years.

Genuinely OP. Do you actually like him or do you just put up with him because you are married?

I would be telling him it’s tough and you’re not going to be stopped inviting whoever you want over.

He managed to make himself scarce when the kids were growing so he can do the same now when you have visitors.

He left you to manage your shared children by yourself for many years and you call him a great husband.
Read your post back…

I know right, but he’s a great husband and father apparently? The mind boggles.

Your husband is utterly ridiculous, controlling and strange.

Omg I thought you would have said you had no children 😳 but the have kids and behave like him is just outrageous.
I don't particularly like children, especially precocious,rude and badly behaved ones! But then I have no kids of my own through choice. Maybe because I had an incredibly strict up bringing where children were seen and not heard.

I don't think a great parent does parenting only on their own terms and only when it's easy. Or misses out the first umpteen years of it, come to that.

In fact, every time I've heard someone on here call their partner a "great dad", he's always been an absolute prick.

You married an arsehole so you surely can’t be surprised that many years later, he is still being an arsehole.

Introverted people like socialising too! No-one should tolerate this behaviour!

So why did you choose to have children with him, rather than just about anyone else?

He avoided his own home and his own children until they were adults? WTAF! How on earth can you describe him as a great husband and a great dad? Did he move out and leave you to parent your children all on your own? I can't believe that you just accepted that and allowed him to return once the kids reached adulthood.

He’s not unreasonable to be concerned about young children breaking things and causing a mess. I don’t like taking my children to nice childfree houses as I worry they could do something. He is unreasonable about not compromising regarding family and your wishes.

You seem to have forgiven him from being absent when your own children were younger. I think many wouldn’t have tolerated that.

I agree with that. I raised my child to be respectful of his house and other people’s houses. But children whose parents allowed them to misbehave badly, mistreat my dogs and break things… nope, I love children, my house was always full of them when DS was young, but I am not a martyr.

Having said that, I still believe that as your DH changed his plans, he is the one who needs to find a place timo to disappear to if he finds it too much to have children around.

You cannot change someone else's behaviour, unless they want to change. He doesn't. Your only option is to change your behaviour. As he has no respect for your wants and seeks to CONTROL your behaviour then you either go along with it or, your best option, initiate divorce proceedings.
Just out of interest why did you marry this unpleasant man?

Also, have the family round as planned, he can remove himself as he’s so used to that.

If you have grown kids, what happens when they have kids? And what kind of parenting patterns have you both modelled for them?

Hmm I can see his point to an extent. I hate playdates and rarely had them at home, we always arranged to meet at soft play or parks. It's ok now the kids are older, but when younger I felt a lot of supervision was needed and it was hard to seem relaxed with friends while also watching their children turn out every toy we had to discard it within seconds.
I do think sometimes family can be worse - my niece is a good example of a kid that would get everything out while my brother would be quickly trying to put it all away again and stop her. And I won't forget the one time my in laws brought the nieces and nephew on their side. I think within 5 mins they had broken a glass and split juice everywhere as well as breaking a toy. They were quickly herded outside.

I think it's great if you have space and can have a play room - one of my friends did and she told us whatever the kids did in that room was fine. Is that an option?

Also if really does depend on the kids ages and what they are doing.

It does seem strange though that you have children and he wasn't involved in their childhood because of this though.

What a miserable twat.

I would stop dancing around his neuroses and tell him he has to grow up and face the fact that he can’t exclude whole swaths of his family because of his own prejudice. He’s been indulged for far too long.

Why do women put up with shit like this from their partners?

It’s fine to find children irritating but to actually hate them, awful. I have dropped 2 women I had become friends with in the earlier stages of friendship because of their actual hatred of children.

It seems like a control issue and the chaos and things being out of order as to why he doesn’t like them as children are unpredictable.

How dreadful he was to his own kids. I just couldn’t love a man like that.

So this man has his own children, and you allowed him to basically not be present for child rearing in the early years. And now you’re allowing him to tell you who can come into your house?
Why is your bar so low OP? What joy or positivity does he bring to your life? He sounds like a prick, possibly with some neurodiversity thrown in.

How did he “avoid the home” for several years when the kids were young?

Did he live somewhere else?

How's he going to be if grandchildren come along? This is a real worry. He's not a great dad if he left the childrearing to you and will opt out of his grandkids life on future. He should have stayed single but that probably would have been inconvenient for him when he found a woman who would expect absolutely zero from him.

This is very odd. Why did he decide to have children himself? It isn’t compulsory

Well he sounds a real barrel of laughs
🤨