Please or to access all these features

Add post

Watch this thread

Save thread

Start a new thread

Flip thread

Hide thread

My feed

Active Unanswered threads

Getting started FAQ's

Unanswered threads Acronyms Talk guidelines

Hide shortcut buttons

Talk

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Flip

1 2 3 4

Original poster

DH's time consuming hobby

81 replies

PhloppysFonics · 14/05/2016 12:12

DH has a time consuming hobby, it's something he does every weekend for 5-6 hours on a weekend morning. Sometimes he asks in advance if a competition is coming up and he will play both weekend days. Sometimes a competition will take all day.

He also spends a week with mates on holiday doing this hobby once a year.

We have one preschooler and one on the way.

AIBU to ask for a hobby free weekend every now and then? E.G. Once every 6 weeks? Once a month? Wherever could go away for a weekend or do things around the home? Or just spend time together?

It's also relevant that my family live away so hobby often prevents/interferes visits to family or from family.

OP posts:

Kidnapped · 15/05/2016 10:32

Never being able to go away for a weekend? He's having a laugh.

Get a calendar and book in a few weekends for family stuff or going away somewhere. And then a couple of weekend days for you when you go and do stuff with your own friends and family, and then he can fit in his stuff around that.

He can play in the evenings after work this time of year, surely? Or take a half day holiday from work occasionally (or flexi-time if he has it) during the week.

arethereanyleftatall · 15/05/2016 10:36

Op, your dh sounds very similar to mine. Mine is absolutely lovely, just loves golf.
How we compromise is:

Play early one weekend morning.
If anything is booked in to do for a weekend, eg weekend away (this happens about once per month), he will finish at 3pm one day in the week to play golf then.

He wouldn't not to play golf just to hang about the house altogether, and I can understand this. Chat and compromise is key.

arethereanyleftatall · 15/05/2016 10:39

Oh - and another thing, his weeks away have all been fine except from when I had a two year old and a newborn, which was hard. In hindsight we realised I should have gone to my mums with the dc that week.

MorrisZapp · 15/05/2016 10:48

Golf was invented by fathers who wanted a lengthy break. Possibly.

DP is a golf obsessive. Before we has DS we made an agreement that leisure time would be fifty fifty, so any free time he got, I would also get. He has stuck to this, in fairness.

But because golf takes up such huge chunks of time, it creates an odd situation where we spend much of the weekend apart. FB is full of families on days out, but we only have days out together maybe one weekend in three.

I don't mind the obligatory annual trip to Marbella (because there are no golf courses in eg Fife!) because I too go away for a few nights when I want to.

It irritates me though. I don't have a named hobby, so if I want to spend five hours on a Sunday mooching about without DS, I look selfish don't I. Whereas GOLF.

DoinItFine · 15/05/2016 10:48

Or maybe he should have not gone onow holiday when his family needed him.

Jesus, the solution is that your mother should have taken on his share of the work of looking after his own family!

Does he have no pride?

I swear if my or my sister's DH pulled a stunt like that my Dad would think we had married very poor excuses for men.

AugustaFinkNottle · 15/05/2016 10:52

It really really wouldn't be unreasonable to expect him to give the hobby a miss at least one weekend a month. It's all very well saying he loves his hobby, but he needs to decide whether he loves it more than he loves his family. If he can't bear the thought of missing out for one weekend it's getting close to an unhealthy addiction.

glassgarden · 15/05/2016 10:54

How can anyone justify golf, a long slow ask where you keep stopping it doesnt even get you fit

Just an excuse to get away from family responsibilities😤

glassgarden · 15/05/2016 10:54

Long slow walk!

Maybeoneday77 · 15/05/2016 11:01

I have been in a similar position, although a different hobby I suspect. He needs to talk to you about it. A crucial thing here is the times. In my view 5/6 hours is too long, especially if it is 10am-4pm. It's the entire day! Especially as I suspect he then comes home tired and grumpy. We compromised, and dh now has 3hours to do his hobby. His is weather dependant so fortunately it isn't every weekend. Probably every other on average. He has 3 hrs sat and sun if he wishes, and before or after we have family time I.e. He comes home and we all go to the pub for lunch or he takes the kids swimming.
The timing really makes a huge diff. First thing or late afternoon is much better. If he goes 7-10 we barely notice, and last night he went 4-8pm and it didn't matter at all as we had been for a lovely afternoon out first. Hope that helps a bit, I know it's hard. You don't want to stop their hobbies but compromise is important with little kids

MorrisZapp · 15/05/2016 11:05

I'm generally ok with golf as a hobby as it gives DP so much. I'm hoping DS will follow in his footsteps and I can get loads of also guilt free leisure time.

It does help with fitness, absolutely. It's a massively long walk. DP also goes to the gym a lot, as peak fitness helps his golf game. I've met some great people at the club social nights too.

But, fuck me. When he's played badly you'd be forgiven for thinking he'd been at work all day. Well boo hoo pal. If you choose to take your self worth from how accurately you can make a small ball fly in the air then live with it.

arethereanyleftatall · 15/05/2016 11:21

Doingitfine - nope, I disagree. I love spending time with my mum, she loves spending time with me and the girls, the girls love a week at the beach with grandma, dh loves golf. Everyone happy.

DoinItFine · 15/05/2016 11:26

I love spending time with my Mum too.

But luckily I don't have to go there because my husband isn'the so shit at looking after his own family that he fuck off on holidays during the times when we need him.

Two parents, two children who need pretty much full time supervision and one of those parents is off on holidays.

That is really shameful.

Knowing you and your children are less important than golf.

arethereanyleftatall · 15/05/2016 11:40

Doingitfine - you have a very negative way of looking at things.
I'm afraid you're never going to convince me that any member of my family should miss out on something, when there's a perfectly acceptable solution resulting in everyone being happy.

FlowersAndShit · 15/05/2016 11:54

Men don't care about family time, it's a romanticised concept of ideal family life created by women. I wish that women would understand that men aren't into the whole family and kids thing in the same way that women are.

Men and women are very different in what they consider to be priorities, responsibilities etc. The men that you see on family days out look thoroughly bored and miserable whilst the woman thinks it's the best day ever.

Que all the posters with the perfect husbands that 'love family time' and 'would never do what the OP's husband does' when in reality, he's busy shagging the OW and going along with the whole perfect dad/husband act.

I admit i'm very cynical of men because I see the above play out time and time again. Men that appear to be decent husbands and fathers are horrible to their wives etc.

glassgarden · 15/05/2016 12:02

I wish that women would understand that men aren't into the whole family and kids thing in the same way that women are

Pretty sure many women find it very stressful and a chore too, they just don't get the opportunity to duck out of it like men do

glassgarden · 15/05/2016 12:07

Cue all the posters who indulge in time consuming hobbies while husband is left at home lumbered with all the chores...😁

DoinItFine · 15/05/2016 12:09

Having been brought up by a father who lovedo and valued family time, that reads like a total crock of shit to me.

My mother spent all week with us, Dad was the one who wanted to spend time with us at the weekend and when he was off work.

As had his father before him.

The idea that all men hate spending time with them is ridiculous.

Some men clearly do. But best not to breed with those ones.

If any of my daughters ever comes to me to stay because she just had a new baby and her husband has gone off on holidays on his own, I will be so sad that she has saddled herself with a shit husband and her children with a shit father.

Someone who would willingly miss out on the crazy newborn days and all the bonding and reassurance of new older siblings and up half the night all hands on deck while we pull together days rather than miss out on a single golf holiday out of a lifetime of golf holidays is not really a proper parent in my book.

I think it'should really sad that you think he would have missed out if he had stayed :(

He missed out because when it was his time to step up and choose his family, he failed.

Kidnapped · 15/05/2016 12:10

Morris,

elQuintoConyo · 15/05/2016 12:25

Dsil is married to a gold bore. His solution is she takes dc to her Mil's house and goes back home to do housework.

I'd drop him like a hot potato.

Purplepicnic · 15/05/2016 12:28

I think he knows he's a bit out of order as he's trying to make it up to you before he goes. Sure you can find a compromise it do it before the new baby comes.

peggyundercrackers · 15/05/2016 12:32

flowersandshit what you have written is a lot of nonsense, most men I know aren't remotely like that.

arethereanyleftatall · 15/05/2016 12:33

I so agree with flowers and shit. So much insistence on 'family time', normally by the mother, resulting in two miserable parents traipsing around a park, rather than the adults taking turns doing something they actually enjoy.
Someone will probably say 'what's the point of having dc then?' So, fir the sake of clarity, I don't mean all the time; just find the balance that works.

Doingitfine - you're getting your knickers in a twist pursuing your own agenda. No one is talking about a parent being absent 24-7, we're discussing a few hours off one morning a week, and one annual tru

arethereanyleftatall · 15/05/2016 12:33

Trip per year.

Mrskeats · 15/05/2016 12:47

I wouldn't be happy at all in your position
Family time is so important and I also don't agree with the idea that men don't enjoy
We both have kids from previous marriages so would always choose time with them over hobbies

WhatALoadOfOldBollocks · 15/05/2016 13:23

Regardless of whether he feels you're being unreasonable to ask for more family time, him refusing to discuss it makes him very unreasonable Stonewallers are a PITA.

Flip

1 2 3 4