to have zero empathy for DHs 'mid-life crisis'

[nincompoopascoop]

I'm currently five months pregnant with dc4, who was a surprise, though we always planned on having dc4 at some point. Our other children are aged 6, 3 and 2 and DH also has a son from his previous marriage who is 8. Recently DHs behaviour has changed and I think it's a because he's made friends with a young (male) colleague who has expensive cars, clothes, holidays, night's out etc.

As examples - in the past three months DH has had seven nights out. More than he's had in the past three years. Now, while I have no problem with him going out per se, I think he's massively taking advantage of my good nature. He's arranged them and told me after the fact, expected lifts to get there, spent the day before shopping for a new outfit/getting his hair cut, stayed the night at his friends house 'so he wouldn't wake us' and not surfaced until the following evening because he's so hungover. Obviously its irrelevant now because I'm pregnant, but I haven't had a night out in four years and DH would be livid if it took days to have one.

He's volunteered for extra work which has meant working away with his friend, again - telling me after the fact. He and his friend have then been sitting in the hotel bar drinking the extra they've earned, while the kids and I are left home without a second thought.

His friend has made some - what I consider - really disrespectful comments about me. We're moving soon to closer to this friend and he joked to DH that he should leave us where we are and houseshare with him 'because he's fun and not just a freeloader' and then in the same conversation 'i guess I see why you'd pick her though, she does have a cracking arse.' DH hasn't pulled him up on this, which is out of character.

The final straw for me has been with regard to my dss. We've spent a great deal of money and time in court to achieve a court order as his mum was obstructing contact. As a result, we haven't seen dss for three months now. Finally last week we received good news and the first scheduled contact weekend is this weekend coming. However, DH came home from work on Friday saying he'd volunteered to go away (several hundred miles away) for a few days with work as of Tuesday, but it could end up oveerunning. I asked what that meant for dss and he said he'd tell exW/court he had no choice. His only concern was whether he'd get in trouble with court, not that it meant he might not see dss for several more months! You won't be surprised to hear that the friend has also volunteered to go...

Aibu to tell him to get a grip and realise he needs to face up to his responsibilities at home rather than making decisions like he's a single man?

You're - so you're just assuming then? Fair enough. I choose not to assume.

Spero, that's what we can agree to disagree on then.

Goodnight.

OP - please don't feel that because you don't want to go partying, you have to 'suck it up'. I am less sociable than DP but that doesn't stop me commenting if I think he's taking the piss. We have a very happy relationship, but that doesn't mean I haven't had to say 'hang on, you want to take holiday to X but we can't do Y as a couple / on the house / whatever'. The fact I am quite content reading a book does not come into it.

I do think you've had a hard time on here, but there are definitely aspects of your DH's behaviour that need addressing regardless of twatmate (who sounds like a knob). The prioritisation thing is worrying.

While I know you've said you're laid back, I wouldn't discount the feedback you've had on his mate's comments. DP and I take the piss out of each other regularly. Good friends of both of us have a certain amount of (mutual) ribbing privilege. People that only know one taking the piss out of the other? Not cool. Accepting that behaviour from a new friend vs an established relationship, really not cool. It's disrespectful and the fact your DP doesn't see it as such would really worry me (although as others have suggested, I would not be surprised if he came up with the nickname ).

I am drawing a reasonable conclusion from very clear and stark evidence that is offered to me directly by the op.

I am curious as to why you are so resistant to recognising how he has treated his eldest child and why the vast majority of posters on this thread find it as unacceptable as did the op.

You are right Spero. He is a man, a husband and a father and he needs to recognise that above everything else. To desist from seeing his eldest child because of his work (?) commitments is beyond reproach. Maybe if he accepts that, his other commitments may follow. Although frankly, I think he's running scared......

Not even work commitments beachy, he volunteered himself for this trip.

Where normal people would have said "oh a work trip, sounds interesting but my son is coming this weekend" this guy actively put himself forward for it.

Yes bubbley i am assuming, but let's be honest, it's hardly a massive leap now is it?

On reflection, I have some sympathy for Bumbley's point of view, inasmuch there is a great tendency on MN for people to jump to massive conclusions on the basis of a few lines of print, when of necessity the reality - particularly when it comes to people's relationships - will be massively more complex than that.

However, I do agree that it's very difficult indeed to get past the business with his son. If I hadn't seen my son of that age for 3 months, there is no way on earth that I would contemplate even the minutest risk of missing a second of his visit. Not only would I not volunteer for this work visit, if I'd been ordered to go on it I would have moved mountains to get out of it. OP rightly started off as particularly angry about this, describing it as 'the final straw'. And it appears that the only thing that made him cancel was her pointing out to him that he should; it didn't occur to him on his own. Combine this with ridiculous behaviour like using his very limited time off for preening himself or sleeping off hangovers, and you have to say that his children just are not his priority now or, probably, ever.

Ichimoi, I think that is very fairly put and I hope I am always conscious of the need to be careful about projecting my own experiences onto someone else's relationships.

However, I do think there is a danger of saying 'relationships are complicated, we can't comment/assume'.

Yes, I don't know the ins and outs of this relationship, who said what to whom, when etc etc. But I don't think that fundamentally it is 'complicated'.

You are either interested in and available for your children or you are not. You either respect your partner and value your family or you don't.

I worry - because this is what happened to me - that we can hide behind 'but it's complicated! Relationships are supposed to be hard!' And ignore what is staring us in the face.

When a partner gives you repeated evidence that they don't value their family or respect you, you need to confront this. And bumbleys attempts to explain away his behaviour could be just as unhelpful as any knee jerk reaction telling her to just leave.

My favourite ever psychological quote is from Carl Rogers - the facts are always friendly. It is never dangerous or unsatisfying to be closer to the truth.

I'm not attempting to 'explain away' behaviour - I'm saying that we don't actually know what the behaviour is. You have one line to go on. One line. From that you have extrapolated that he didn't want to see his son/only cancelled because his friend wasn't going etc. As I've pointed out, it could have been the case that there was only a tiny possibility of it running over and running over may not have meant losing the entire weekend with his son. He may not have properly thought it through and as soon as he realised that there was a possibility that he would miss his son and not see him for a while then he cancelled. You seem quite happy to take a lot from that one line and ignore the fact that he spent months trying to get access in the first place.

No one is saying that his going out behaviour is reasonable and everyone is encouraging the OP to call him on that. I just don't think it is fair/right/helpful to start speculating about the intricacies of people's relationships based on one line of information. Why can't you just accept that I don't agree with you on this? You are not in the position to convince me. You have the exact same information as I do.

Not only did he volunteer for a job that might interfere with his chance to see his son for the first time in 3 months...

He then discussed how he was going to lie so it all looked like it wasn't his fault!!

He was planning to present things as if he was a victim of circumstance, hiding the decision he made. 'Oh such a shame I've forced to work when I could be seeing my son'....that was his plan. OP said so.

This is who he is. Dear God...that alone tells us where his moral compass points.

It would be fair for the PP's husband to organise work that might over run into his contact weekend in an alternative universe where it is OK for me to call the school at 3.30 and say "Sorry, my meeting is overrunning, I'll pick DS up tomorrow".

Do you explain away everything that you and your husband and child do,bm?
I suppose it must be possible to do that.
Wow. Didnt knwo there were people that do that. I was naive.

I'm often accused in rl of sitting on the fence and seeing both sides to a situation. But here we can only go on the words written by the op. It seems quite clear cut to me.

Perhaps the gentleman in question does have some redeeming features, but they have to be bloody good to override the information that the op herself has told us.

I don't have much information I agree, but the information I have is very clear. What more do we need to understand this situation?

Bumbley you say only a tiny possibility of it running over which is your own speculation and gloss - how do you possibly know what the actual chances were of it running over?

Surely the point is, as so many have said now, that even the remotest possibility of missing that particular weekend SO enormously important after the long gap in contact and the expensive court battle, means that any parent with any sense of decency and commitment to his child would not have taken any risk of buggering up that weekend.

I agree with you that we shouldn't rush into judgement based on our own prejudices - its just that I don't see anyone here doing that. But I do see you continually trying to massage away some very uncomfortable facts and I just wonder how you think that is helpful to the op or any woman in her position.

And we still don't know if he's not going because he changed his mind, or if because twatmate decided not to go so DH backed out to!

I also asked the op a long time ago who was really pushing for this court battle. She never responded.

You assume he was ignore the fact that he spent months trying to get access in the first place.

I wonder about that. Pretty odd behaviour if he was the one who instigated and fought these court proceedings. Be interesting to know about that. My guess is that if op hadn't pushed him, he wouldn't have bothered. Because she says that is exactly how he will be with his other children if she leaves him and moves just three hours away.

It's not the first time the course of a thread has pushed the OP into feeling that defending her OH is her priority.

All I'll say OP, is that he can not possibly be the lovely man you say he is if he was willing to volunteer for work (to hang out with his mate) instead of seeing his son for the first time in months and possibly jeopardizing his future access. Even saying that he will go out drinking on Friday suggests that seeing his kid on the weekend is not his priority.

I also don't understand why he would choose to be friends with someone who sounds as awful as this guy does. I can't picture them out on a night out with the friend being an obnoxious leering pig and your DH being pure as the driven snow. If they stay at his for the night it is entirely possible that they bring women back, or at least try to. You can say he wouldn't dream of it, but would you have thought he'd let a man insult you and demean you behind your back until you discovered that he actually does?

I doubt he's having an affair, gay or otherwise, but he is socializing and drinking with a man who clearly has no respect for women, and if you think the 'But she won't come back without her mate...' line hasn't been employed yet, you're very naive.

You're not powerless in this situation. Put your foot down. He's supposed to be your partner, not your stroppy teenage son. Instead of going out for the night he should be at home working on his parenting skills.

"Sorry, my meeting is overrunning, I'll pick DS up tomorrow".

Or maybe a bit late? I'm pretty sure it has happened to people before. Does that make you/them neglectful, selfish parents who don't care about their children?

"but the information I have is very clear"

No, it isn't. you have just decided to interpret it one way and you think you are right.

"I also asked the op a long time ago who was really pushing for this court battle. She never responded."

So you assume that it wasn't him? Yep, that pretty much sums up the thread. We don't know so we'll fill in the gaps ourselves and assume the worst.

Not 'massaging away' anything - just pointing out that there are other possibilities and without having more information We.Just.Don't.Know.

Nin, Can you please save this thread somewhere and reread it occasionally to keep a check on what is and what isn't thought reasonable by other people.
Every relationship has to run by what both people feel is acceptable behaviour to them and so your relationship is your business but I hope that this thread has given you a great deal of food for thought.
Can you please think carefully (and discuss with your husband) about what life you want to model for your children and DSS?
Maybe you could use Friday night to talk about what kind of father he wants to be, what family life you both want and how his recent behaviour and friendship is making you feel? It doesn't sound as though he's in anyway adept at working out for himself what you feel or want so spell it out to him.

Or maybe a bit late? hmm I'm pretty sure it has happened to people before. Does that make you/them neglectful, selfish parents who don't care about their children?

Read back to yourself what you have just written. Then ask yourself - genuinely, honestly - can you really see NO distinction between a parent who says

a) sorry, I am caught up at work, won't get to put the kids to bed tonight, how about I take them swimming on Saturday morning to give you a lie in... for example AND

b)I haven't seen my son for three months. he must be really worried and confused as to what the hell is going on. Its our first weekend of contact coming up, after a long and expensive court battle, but you know what? I think it would be more fun to take a work trip with my young mate, maybe get my hair done before I go.

Etc, etc, etc.

OF COURSE sometimes parents have to work and don't get to see their children. Some weeks I am lucky if I see my daughter for 20 mins a day. But I damn well make sure she knows that I am in her life, that I care about her, that I WANT to see her even when I can't.

I repeat.

What is missing from what you have been told about this man's behaviour to mean you can't conclude that he has behaved appallingly with regard to his son.

Obviously, I am not engaging this with any hope to have any impact on bumbley, I know that won't happen.

But if anyone is reading this who thinks its ok and acceptable for a parent to behave like that, I hope you will consider what I and many others are saying.

It really isn't.

isnt it funny op has now vanished. so much speculation and no real facts now.

Again, the work trip was during the week with the possibility if it over running (we don't know how much by) and he has cancelled it.

Tbh I think this thread is quite likely to discourage people from posting anything about their relationship at the risk of having it torn apart and having to defend themselves. Well done.

So just to be clear Bumbley.

That having gone to court to fight for access...having not seen the son for 3 months...that it's perfectly okay to have the possibility of not seeing his son because he volunteered to go away?

To choose to be in a position of possibly letting his son down at the last minute is okay?

To choose to come up with lies to pretend he had no choice is okay?

And none of that matters now because he's decided not to go (not that we know why he decided).

Wow.

I may have missed something, but the OP said a good number of unequivocal facts about her DH's behaviour quite outside the coulda/mighta stuff, in her OP.

There's quite enough there to see this man as being as big a twunt as she says in later posts.

OP has backtracked something shocking - her prerogative - but to cast this as MNers being out of order is wide of the mark.

To have all but one poster confirming her AIBU really says something.

I imagine the OP will eventually pitch up in Relationships, where she should have posted in the first place, though she'd have got exactly the same response, when her hopeless DH has finally gone beyond the pale.