AIBU about the blasted car?

[CrazyOldCatLady]

Our car is out of action for the last two weeks; it's in the garage waiting for a new part to be delivered.

My parents have very kindly lent us one of their cars for the duration, because we travel 70km each way to work and public transport isn't an option (it would be a bus, then a train, then a tram, then a half hour walk, so probably a total of 3 hours each way and there's no way we'd do it within creche opening hours!). They're using their second car.

I can't drive my parents' car because I'm not insured - I'm on a provisional licence. Plus roughly half of our commute is on motorway, and I can't do that on a provisional. So DH is doing all the driving.

The car is a small engined automatic. Our own is a manual diesel with a bigger engine and generally a lot more power. DH detests my parents' car, he finds it unresponsive and it changes gear at ridiculous times (changing up a gear halfway up a steep hill, for example!) or doesn't change when it should (accelerating on the straight, it'll stay in a low gear till the engine is racing before it changes up). I know he's right, I'd find it annoying to drive too.

The problem is that DH emphatically refuses to adjust his driving to suit the car's limitations. He floors the accelerator despite knowing that it'll just make the engine unhappy. It can't keep up with him at all. He admitted last week that he knows he's mistreating it, that he shouldn't be trying to push it when he knows well that it won't perform the way he wants it to. But he keeps doing it. He gets angry and forces the revs up into the red - the same shade of red as his face while he's doing it.

We've had the same argument over and over for the last two weeks. My dad specifically asked me to mind the car as it's old and they need it. But DH insists on driving it badly, and when I pull him up on it he says it's the car's fault for being useless. I think he's being horribly ungrateful to my parents; they lent us the car in good faith, thinking we'd take good care of it, and he isn't. I feel he's forcing my to lie to my parents and I don't like it. Also he said he wouldn't treat a car belonging to his parents that way, but it's different because it's my parents. When I asked him why, he said 'my parents would never own an automatic' - which is a total cop out of an answer, and just comes back to blaming the car!

I'm utterly confused by all this. I'm so used to thinking of DH as a fundamentally nice person but at the moment he's coming across as a selfish, entitled git and I just don't like him.

He doesn't sound like the nice, relaxed, laid back guy you describe him as. He sounds like a complete selfish prick.

I honestly don't think it's worth trying to continue in the relationship. He will repeat this awful behaviour over and over again. Run while you can.

oh lovely. He has just told you that he doesn't care about you at all. He knows he is in the wrong and just cba to put that right. There is no love here, or respect or even basic kindness.

I feel like I say ltb a lot on here, and I try quite hard not to because I knoe it's not that easy, but when you are with someone who doesn't want to fix things then you can't do it on your own and I can't see an alternative. So sorry x

Take the car back to your parents and tell your husband he must rent another if he is incapable of driving an automatic properly. Automatics are a bit odd to drive when you're used to a manual but that doesn't mean you try to damage them.

As for the rest you have bigger problems - why is your dad's car less worthy of respect than his dad's car. Why are you less worthy of respect than his family.

I hope he realises what a twat he's being and apologises.

I'm sorry he's well and truly revealing his true colours to you over this .... though I think you weren't unaware were you ?

I think the only thing you can do, as you can't drive solo, is to ask your parents to come and fetch the car. It's not fair on them otherwise, it simply isn't.

And then you need to decide what to do about him.

And then you need to decide what to do about him.
I wish I could. A lot of the time everything's fine, more or less. And I don't feel qualified to judge what's normal and what isn't; my mother did this ignoring-for-days thing all the time so it feels normal to me - just not pleasant!

Well, this isn't normal.

Individual things you might be able to look at and say 'well, this is just how he is about driving/my parents' property/my feelings,' but it's clearly not individual things.

Do you think he knows this isn't just about the car? If he's ignoring you and you're not speaking, presumably he thinks you're angry about his bad driving. Would you be able to talk to him about the other things too?

I've been in this situation where I've borrowed my dads second car whilst mine was off the road. I would be horrified if my dh was as rude and ungrateful as yours is being. If he had been I would have told him "you can't treat someone else's property like this. If my dad treated your car badly like crashing through the gears all the time just because it's not an automatic would you find that ok?"
If I couldn't get him to see sense I would return the car and hire one. I would rather have the hire car bill than the embaressment of damaging my dads car through misuse. If I didn't want my dad to know I hired a car I would tell him a friend was going away for a couple of weeks and was generous enough to lend a car.

If you are insured on your own car can you not contact the insure company to put youf dads car on the policy temporairily instead? I am assuming your dh is driving under your policy? If you can then I would do the driving that wasn't motorway just to prove a point.

You could of course disconnect domething in the engine of your dads car and give your dh a fright that he now has a bill to fix a second car through his driving.........

But you do know the bigger issue here is your dh's crappy ungratefull attitude .....

Reminds me of the bit in "In Bruges" where Ralph Fiennes' character is battering the lights out of the phone and his wife says, "Harry, it's an inanimate object" and he screams back, "You're an inanimate fucking object".
I watch motorbike road racing sometimes. When the riders get off the ultra powerful Superbike beasts and get on the Supertwins (that sound and smell like lawnmowers and go about half the speed of the big bikes) they don't go red in the face and ride like idiots and get off and kick the bikes for not being Superbikes. They have fun and get the most out of the little bikes while knowing their limitations. Because they are not ridiculous pathetic spoilt children with a complete inability to control their tempers.

He knows it not just about the driving, he knows I think he's being terribly ungrateful and that I'm annoyed that he's dismissing my parents as less worthy of respect than his. I think it's because I told him these things (multiple times!) that he's being so awful. He doesn't like me finding fault with him and always reacts the same way. He's very predictable. He'll get angry and start telling me whatever it is is my fault, not his. Then he'll list other things I've done to annoy him. Then he'll tell sulk. Then he'll do the 'fine then, if that's the way you feel about it you'd be better off without me', and then the 'I'm so crap, I'm so sorry, I'm a terrible person, you deserve so much better' and I'll end up reassuring him, and feeling bad for starting the argument in the first place (I'm awfully paranoid about the fact that our arguments always start over something he's done to piss me off - he never seems to have a problem with me, and I end up wondering if I'm terribly intolerant).

You return the car to your parents and say "why should they lend us something valuable when you are prepared to treat their daughter so badly?"

Then walk away.

A lot of the time everything's fine, more or less

You need to have a serious look at your idea of "fine" and your self-esteem if his behaviour is in anyway acceptable to you.

If you really feel it's you minding about things rather than his actions that cause the problems (from your description that doesn't sound right, btw- he was angry with car without you pointing out he was an ungrateful thrasher), you could try disengaging and not criticising.
I think you'd turn into a seething ball of resentment though.

Absolutely, nodding. The people who command most respect for their skill are the ones who can adapt their skill to the situation/tools at hand. Which the 'drive it like I stole it' brigade clearly can't/don't. It's a particularly repugnant aspect of 'laddishness', and attractive only to each other like squealy teenage girls IMO

CrazyOldCatLady What you describe in your last post is not normal. He is most definitely at fault here, it's not you at all.

I strongly suggest you get over to the Relationship board. Your DH sounds abusive.

Yes but I treat my own cars even harder. Always carefully warmed up and cooled down and perfectly maintained but driven like I stole them.

Bigdog888, Are you sure you're old enough to drive?

OP, I think the old adage "when someone shows you who they are, believe them" applies here. Your husband sounds far from "fundamentally nice".

Bigdog, I've reported your post. Please could you just drop it?

You do need help OP with your relationship. None of what you describe is acceptable to most people. My dh and I do argue as do most couples. If either of us is wrong we say sorry and move on. And change the behaviour that is wrong and afterwards we do talk with both of us wanting to sort it. Does he change after a row? Does he actually heed what issue is raised or is it more about telling him he's not a bad person, of course you want him....in other words giving him reassurance that you will continue to accept his behaviour.

bigdog88...what an intelligent post. whatever point you thought you had made now looks as stupid as your last post.

A mechanic who studied for 4 years and knows cars? Sounds like an excellent job with hard earned qualfications to most people who aren't twats.

The people who command most respect for their skill are the ones who can adapt their skill to the situation/tools at hand

Absolutely, which is why for example I drive fragile British classics extremely gently and rag the tits off Japanese screamers. The vast majority of cars built in the last 15 years will be scrapped long before their engines are worn out - the car industry really has come a long way in the last 15 years.

OP "I'm awfully paranoid about the fact that our arguments always start over something he's done to piss me off - he never seems to have a problem with me, and I end up wondering if I'm terribly intolerant"

Is this because as soon as you realize you're doing something he doesn't like you change? And you actively look for his approval on many things? Whereas he just keeps going unless he is pretty much made to stop? - I'm suggesting this because it seems to be a common (though by no menas universal) dynamic in couples in this country.

Bigdog, I've reported your post. Please could you just drop it

I sincerely hope you reported Peekinduck's post as well then?

Give your parents the car back. Just do it. Without telling him. Then shrug when he asks how he's going to get to work.

Then think hard about losing the nasty childish twat.