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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To tell DH to fetch it himself?

167 replies

GooseyLoosey · 17/06/2013 10:38

Bit of background - DH likes bikes. Not like a normal person might but in the way that a train spotter likes trains. This has caused some tension over the years but I try to rise above it. DH has over 20 bikes in various states of partial dismemberment. He yearns to buy more "vintage bikes" (aka rubbish) all of the time and spends hours looking at pictures on e-bay. It is quite sad really.

Yesterday he runs into the kitchen telling me he had found a bike with the perfect 1950s cranks on that he had been looking for for months. His for a mere hundred and something pounds, but not to worry because there were bits on it he did not want that he could sell for twice that. He has never sold one single bike bit despite saying something similar each time he buys one. I tell him he knows my feelings about bikes and what our finances are like but he is an adult and I am not going to stop him spending the money he earns. Two minutes later he comes into the kitchen, the proud owner of yet another bike. I grimmace.

He comes to give me a hug and is very lovey. I think this is because he has bought the bloody thing and is trying to win me over. But no, there is more to it. Turns out the bike is collection only from London. We live over a hundred miles from London. However, I work there. He wants me to collect it from a suburb it will take about 40 minutes to get to after work and then somehow I have to get it back to the mainline train station and then in my car at the other end. I told him to get his own fecking bike.

His reply to me was that I was being totally unreasonable and he bet that if he was on something like mumsnet and asked everyone would agree, so I told him I would ask. If you lot tell me IABU, I will go and get the damn thing. If not, he is on his own. So, am I?

OP posts:
kitsmummy · 17/06/2013 11:57

I think you should get it for him. It is, after all, only a short journey out of your way and why wouldn't you support him in his hobby. After all, I expect if you had a hobby of cake making or some such thing, then he would support you in that wouldn't he? said no-one, ever Grin

EldritchCleavage · 17/06/2013 11:57

I hope this selfishness stops at the bikes and doesn't spill over into other areas of your life together.

God, it must be tempting to sell the lot for scrap behind his back.

fuzzywuzzy · 17/06/2013 12:00

LTB (has anyone said that yet )

BTW YAmostcertainlyNOTBU

lottiegarbanzo · 17/06/2013 12:01

I'd be really interested to see how he would have worded the OP!

The purchasing before asking you is he absolute U-ness here. Rather, he must have factored in courier costs, or the inconvenience of him collecting, when he bought it. So, he's just trying it on.

travellingwilbury · 17/06/2013 12:02

First of all yanbu obviously !
Secondly , what is the point of his hobby ?
Does he ever actually restore and ride any of them ?
Does he ever sell any of them ever ?

If not then are you so loaded that he can have hundreds ( thousands ?) Of pounds just sitting in a rusty pile of bolts ?

MadBusLady · 17/06/2013 12:02

Giving him the benefit of the doubt, I think some otherwise sane, reasonable people just get completely unreasonable and selfish about one particular obsession. And they sort of can't accept that not everyone is as thrilled with the thing as they are. However much evidence they get that no-one else is interested or wants to put themselves out for the hobby, they keep reverting to seeing it as a communal enterprise, hence their wildly unreasonable expectations of other people. That's what my dad is like with cars.

BrianTheMole · 17/06/2013 12:04

Get someone from here to pick it up. look
I've had bikes delivered through this before quite cheaply. I wouldn't go and pick it up.

Goldmandra · 17/06/2013 12:05

Has anyone mentioned yet that you are not allowed to take a bike on a rush hour train? Folding bikes only.

Would it still be rush hour by the time she'd finished work, travelled for forty minutes and ridden the bike back to the station?

GooseyLoosey · 17/06/2013 12:05

"I hope this selfishness stops at the bikes and doesn't spill over into other areas of your life together" - it does. I can laugh about it because it is not the norm. My otherwise reasonable husband turns into a drooling loon at the sight of what to me is a heap of rusting metal. He talks to me about them too sometimes and looks a bit bewildered and hurt when he finally twigs to the fact that I couldn't care a less.

"I think heaving a rusty piece of junk all over London and home for hours will give you CONSIDERABLY more ill-will towards this purchase than knowing the price of the courier would". You are quite right. I know I would end up in an argument with someone at some stage of the journey home and the resulting rise in my blookd pressure would probably shorten my life expectancy.

OP posts:
mouldyironingboard · 17/06/2013 12:08

YANBU

If he wants the bike badly enough he should collect it himself.

Message to mrgooseyloosey:

You should buy your lovely wife a big bunch of flowers and a box of her favourite chocolates for even making such a selfish suggestion and upsetting her. Not many women would put up with your hobby and you need to start showing her how much your appreciate her tolerance.

ByTheWishingWell · 17/06/2013 12:14

Another vote for you- YANBU, but I'm sure you know that now Grin

I think he's very lucky to have you- if my DP's rusty piles of crap hobby had already taken over the shed, there's no way he'd be moving the overspill into the house. Put your foot down! Grin

Aniseeda · 17/06/2013 12:18

You are so not being unreasonable you are the queen of not being unreasonable!

He wants it - he collects it. The end!

DorisIsWaiting · 17/06/2013 12:23

So NBU.

I have a garage full of 'ratty' chairs in various stages of repair (to be sold on). I wouldn't dream of asking dh to go and pick one up, my choice my problem.

GooseyLoosey · 17/06/2013 12:30

sparechange - "Goose's fun fund" - I am so putting that on a jar when I get home and adopting an expectant look around dh in the hope that he will add to it.

Aniseeda "the queen of not being unreasonable" - I want that on a tee shirt.

OP posts:
HabbaDabbaDoo · 17/06/2013 12:36

If you can say that in all your time together you have never asked him to do something that greatly inconvenienced him then YANBU.

Alternatively, get a courier to pick it up. Problem solved :) It can't be that much more expensive than the train fare.

CocktailQueen · 17/06/2013 12:43

YANBU - tell him to get it himself!! 20 bikes is insane. He knew you weren't keen, he didn't ask you if you could collect it before be bid on it - no way! He can fetch it himself.

TotallyBursar · 17/06/2013 12:52

So it's not even that he can't do it as has no car/doesn't drive, he just can't be arsed and doesn't see why you shouldn't do the shitwork so he can just have the fun.

And he thinks you're being unreasonable?

Some people's lack of introspection, insight and grip on reality is shocking.
He does know you aren't his personal staff doesn't he?

Blimey, two votes here for you - DH said his response would be to give me a big cuddle as he proclaimed 'I'm afraid the lack of oxygen from having your head so far up your arse has started to play havoc with your faculties. Luckily I can tell you your legs still work'. And that is from a man who drove 10 hours in a day to pick up a surprise rescue dog, so it's not like he's averse to helping me out!

FryOneFatManic · 17/06/2013 15:44

What TotallyBursar said. YANBU, not one little bit.

His bike, his problem.

I have hobbies, mostly little craft ones. But I don't inflict them on anyone else in the house. I look after and sort out my own bits and pieces. I don't expect anyone else to inconvenience themselves because I can't be arsed to do something.

raisah · 18/06/2013 08:43

YANBU to tell him to get his own bloody bike. It is the last thing you want to do after work to go & collect a bike from an unknown part of London.

PearlyWhites · 18/06/2013 08:51

Gosh your dh wants you to spend a whole forty minutes of your life doing something for him. Never mind being unreasonable I would LTB.

RikeBider · 18/06/2013 08:56

No WAY would I collect it for him!

I would have put my foot down about buying it until he'd sold some of the bits he has been promising to sell but never has too... Can't his hobby become self-funding?

lottiegarbanzo · 18/06/2013 08:56

Oh, hello OP's DH!

KneeDeepInDaisies · 18/06/2013 09:06

Mr GooseyLoosey -YABU but I think you know. Well done for trying your luck though.

Please look at what your DW has written here. Don't you think it's time to start culling the collection or at least selling some spare parts?

If you were my DH you would be have been asked to choose between me and the bikes a long time ago. You're lucky your wife is nicer than me.

Sell your shit, take your wife away on a cycling holiday and get a better hobby.

Peanate · 18/06/2013 09:06

I'm totally on your side OP, but thought I would suggest a compromise?

You will happily go and retrieve said rusty hunk of metal, on the condition that before you collect it, he has to dispose of at least 4-5 other bikes at your house.

saintmerryweather · 18/06/2013 09:06

yeah but its not just 40 minutes is it? shes got to ride the bloody rattly deathtrap back to the station without getting maimed or killed theb somehow get it into her car at the other end. and im guessing its not going to be light either if its that old