Just a lighthearted rant really. Wonder if anyone’s in the same boat. Christmas party season and all that.
DH doesn’t enjoy socialising but still insists on coming because he wants to have an evening out with me. That sounds nice, but it means he wants me to talk exclusively to him, leave early to be with him or go for dinner, and it also means that from the moment we get there he is preparing to go, or telling me we “need to be off soon” and over the course of the first hour, giving me looks which eventually lead to completely unsubtle gestures, that it’s “time to leave” because he’s bored.
I like to meet new people and friends of friends at friends’ parties, so often start up conversations with people I don’t know. He finds this “crazy” and “Unhinged” so is often hovering on the outskirts of my conversations looking outraged.
He also becomes really needy and pins me in a corner and wants me to talk about him and what’s going on in his life (his work, the kids,) which I actually don’t want to do when I am in a social situation.
He monitors my drinking and tells me my eyes go droopy when i’ve had a few, and then from a distance or even in front of others, keeps pulling his eyes down and imitating me knocking back a drink to show me that he thinks i’ve had too much to drink. He often gets this wrong too as he sometimes says it when I have not had a drink at all but he suspects I have.
In the rare circumstance of him actually finding someone to talk to who isn’t me, he then pins them into a corner and bores them to death about something really technical. Anecdotes which focus very much on a chronological order of events rather than a good story. Eg the last time he did this he explained in great technical detail to some poor woman how he sanded, waxed and polished a table. He is also constantly getting out photos of our children and showing them to others without them asking or without the topic even being the kids. And it’s not just one photo, it’s the whole camera roll. And they are just stuck there with him swiping away.
I end up curtailing my own enjoyment because I feel such pressure from him and other people’s discomfort to leave because nobody is talking to him or the person he is talking to has walked off and he doesn’t know how to strike up another conversation.
Also I like to be quite self deprecating when I talk to others. So I often make jokes at my own expense. He doesn’t like this at all, takes it very literally and thinks that I am doing myself down / have No respect for myself, and often challenges me while I am speaking by saying “you're Not really like that” or “she’s exaggerating...”
Not looking for solutions - I have told him all this before we go anywhere and actually tried to stop him coming, but he always promises he won’t then reverts to the same behaviour every time.