AIBU to really dislike DH after our holiday?

@HelpMEunderstand0

This.

Sorry, OP.

Think you were right in your decision last year. DS will eventually adjust, surely?

I have been there. If you already split once, nothing improved, and then this: he obviously isn't getting the message and won't change. You need to start making plans. You should probably learn from the last experience with your son. Maybe have conversations with him, start spending more time with him - any other male role models in your family? Good luck OP.

My guess is that these three instances on holiday are the tip of the iceberg. What are the chances he's a chilled, responsive, loving father and husband and only like this on holiday? It's nil, isn't it?

I have a friend (male) a bit like this. He justifies it by saying he is super competitive - which is true - and that this is not something he wants to change. Well, ok.

As a related characteristic, he can also be quite nervy and anxious, restless. But my DH - who has been his close friend for much longer - has said that this speeds him in a direction where he will only do exactly what he wants to do, no room for considering anyone else. An example is that his partner asked for a meal in a cafe without something that it probably would have come with. The meal came and the food was on the plate. Friend was in high dudgeon and wanted to send it back but his partner robustly said no, they didn't want their meal taken away again...but it was as if he was only interested in how he was going to handle it. I am quite sure that if it had been me and DH instead, I would have been amazed if he had still overridden my preference and whipped it all up that many times.

I suspect that your DH was stressed, particularly in the airport, but that he has a very short rope of tolerance for what other people want if it even slightly clashes with his forward progress. When people are easily conquerable, this comes across as ego driven and rude, but for him, that's a blind spot with nothing he's bothered by. By the sound of it, you and the DC see it clearly and continue to have it reinforced. This would sound like a situation that could grind you all down easily - if you are not happy and would feel more peace when out of that all the time, then you don't need to talk yourselves out of those things being really important. Also, although you have a few years, if your DC leave home in the late teens, it'll be you and him 1 on 1 at home. How do you feel about that?

With the thread, not with you, I thought I made that clear. Last attempt.

My last post was actually intended for @HumberSquid :)

What is alarming about this particular situation is the aggression-

"A little boy of 8 years old is on the resort and is very good at pool and has beat both my kids in good spirits each time he’s played them. DH said “ Let’s see how good he is then “ and proceeded to floor him, hitting the balls in really hard and a little aggressively. I was mortified that a 45 year old would take joy in beating a small 8 year old and my son then got annoyed with DH and tried to knock the cue out of his hand on the last shot which made DH shout “ if you did that to someone in a real pool match they would punch you in the face “"

This is a grown, muscular, tall man. He is 6 foot 4. There is a large size and physical power differential between him and the majority of other people. Yet this man does not temper his aggression against small children. Yes, he embarrassed himself - to us, we as grown adults could think "my god, what a complete prat". But to his children, and possibly the 8 yo, everything he did was very physically intimidating.

A man who cannot control himself, cannot regulate himself, has no self-awareness to the point that he behaves spitefully and aggressively with much smaller children, is not a man I would have around my children.

Ignore the excuses by some posters. They have shown they are about scoring points and not here to give good advice.

OP I think the advice and empathetic sharing by other posters has been excellent. Especially those speaking from the perspective of the children of such men. The best thing you can do is offer the children some safety, distance, and perspective on their dad. They can still love him and want to see him happy snd well. But he doesn’t need to be parented or coddled by them. They don’t need to protect him from being “victimized” by others, or life, or his own behavior and its consequences. He’s a big boy.

Just leave and teach them to accept his limitations. They can love him without submitting to his caprice or his emotional incompetence. That’s the goal.

Firstly we have not been getting on for a long time now and this was meant to be a bit of a deciding holiday as I’m struggling to connect with him at all in recent years mainly with the lack of understanding around the children’s needs or practical help with any of it

There are clearly serious issues in the marriage. Which led to a temporary separation. This holiday’s behaviour was very unlikely a one-off.

I have worked as a consultant psychiatrist for 20 years, nine of those were in women’s mental health. I think there are some serious red flags in the behaviours mentioned here. If a woman mentioned this trip, then we would absolutely discuss the issues raised in an MDT and ask further questions. And possibly discuss with children’s services too.

What an odious man.

I would leave him.

Don't waste time on counselling. He is vile and abusive to you and the children. Your DS will cope. This is not how family life should be. Get your ducks in a row and leave

You are continuing to engage

He sounds like a total prick.

Surely these personality traits have not appeared overnight. How on earth have you ended up staying in a relationship with someone like this?

It absolutely is bullying to challenge a small child and stranger at a game and then play it so aggressively that you smash him without any shared sense of fun or humour about the whole thing.…!

op wouldn't be allowed to feed it healthy food either though Im assuming

"people often love - even adore - their abusers, especially when everyone enables them and conveys the idea that this is normal family life"

Yes, it's called perspecticide. It can happen to adults, as we see often in the DV posts on MN. But kids stand no chance, they literally think abusive behaviour is normal, because they have no frame of reference, no perspective.

Until one day they see someone outside of the dysfunctional family system who looks shocked or says something critical. For me, it was when the wife of a friend of my father said, at a party where my father had said something sneering to Mum, "You are such an unpleasant man."

For my H, whose father sometimes whipped him and his brother for complaining about the food at the table, it was seeing the cleaning lady (who ate with them) gasping and putting her big work-worn hands over her mouth in horror.

Dysfunctional and abusive family systems are like little cults.

Incredibly concerning to me how one poster is still insisting on laying blame for this man's reactions and behaviour on the children. As someone who had to remove their own children from a similar toxic situation then divorce their father, it makes me inexplicably angry. For that reason I will not respond directly in quote to that poster, but I shudder at what this blaming says about them. Also note, on edit, that they state they have kind husband, father, sons, so my previously asking them if they had experience of this type of situation, no they evidently do not, making this even worse for me that they make the comments they have from a position where they absolutely do not understand.

Nope I have a kind husband, father and sons. You’re putting your embellishments in. There is no indication the kid was kidding around and yes kids repeatedly ignoring no in shops can be challenging.

Challenging situation! Your words. Of course a teenager kidding around in a shop is not challenging at all. To a normal parent. And losing your spouse in the airport because you moved off and finding them at the gate is no big deal and doesn’t require a mantrum. And entering a children’s friendly competition to “teach an 8 year old a lesson “ is an absolutely textbook example of bullying and inappropriate behavior in an adult.

You seem to accept the idea that men are just giant, angry, ineptly controlling bullies as the norm. Maybe your father was this way but my father, brother, and husband are calm and kind all the time even in airports. Or on holiday.its really not rocket science.

Sounds like you have three kids not two !
what a pathetic man he is . Get rid before he influences your poor kids any further than he already has .

No wonder your emotions are so high. He is an egotistical moody controlling idiot.
He would put most people sideways.
His DC don’t even like him. That’s a low bar as children nearly always want to be in love with their parents.

A kid completely ignoring and repeatedly putting an item back in a basket is challenging. He didn’t have a melt down in the airport he simply went to the gate. He beat a child at pool, not the crime of the century .

Not suggesting you stay with him btw @HelpMEunderstand0 - a constant drip of anger and negativity is not much fun to live with and you cant stay married just to please your son. How would you feel about your ds choosing to live with him though? Is that likely?

Its not a “challenging situation.” none of these were challenging situations. Why the low bar for this man? His behavior is overly emotional and he is an adult.

Large adult man is unable to manage emotions and is rude to cashier, aggressive to an 8 year old, and has a cruel melt down in the airport and is unpleasant to his daughter for no reason.

Is this ok because he’s not a teenager, a child, or a woman? Why is everyone else in this scenario responsible for their behavior but this man is not?

Indeed. And people often love - even adore - their abusers, especially when everyone enables them and conveys the idea that this is normal family life and a normal relationship. It’s not and those around them have a duty to make sure that it is stopped.

Those poor DC deserve better.