I’ll try and make this as brief as possible… I just need an outside perspective as I feel like I’m going loopy.
Sunday was my first Mother’s Day. There has been some tension between me and my DP since Christmas, largely due to his relationship with alcohol (and certain members of his family facilitating this) but we’ve been trying to resolve the problem… or so I thought. During this time, we’ve been in daily contact and spent time together but I’ve also been at my parents’ with DS while we try and figure things out.
Certainly, on Mother’s Day DP appeared to pull out all the stops and presented me with beautiful flowers and a lovely card from our DS. DS and I had stayed overnight with him on the Saturday, and on the Sunday he had lunch with me and my family and later popped in to his mum’s with DS as she was throwing a Mother’s Day buffet. Rightly or wrongly, I didn’t go because my relationship with my MIL and SIL is equally tense at the moment due to the issues I’m having with DP.
Here I should say that I am no saint, and have reacted badly to previous incidents, angrily letting rip at my SIL when she was been directly involved, and also angrily snapping at MIL when she’s tried to defend DP’s behaviour. I should also add that before DP went on Sunday, he insisted that he and hers wouldn’t be drinking at the party as it was a Mother’s Day gathering on a Sunday afternoon and everyone would be driving. My in laws like a drink (or ten!) and every visit to MIL’s house involves alcohol. Before I had DS, I was happy to drink, although I’d long since tired of every visit culminating in getting drunk. One of the issues I have with DP is that he seems unable to spend time with MIL or SIL without getting drunk.
So, DP’s at the Mother’s Day buffet at MIL’s house and after a couple of hours I text him to see how he’s getting on with DS. All good, he says. I’m conscious that DS’ dinnertime is coming up so I ask DP if he would like me to come and collect DS at 6pm so he can be fed by 6.30pm at home, or was there anything he could feed DS there? He text back, saying as I offered it would be good if I could collect DS at 6pm, because he was being irritable and was only happy if DP was holding him, which meant DP wasn’t able to socialise with anyone. I asked if he would be coming back with us as well, but he said he was going to stay as he hadn’t had a chance to speak to people at the gathering. No problem, I said.
When I got there, though, everyone was leaving. Strange, I thought, so when DP brought DS out in his car seat I asked him if he wanted to come back with us. He said no, he would come back when SIL was leaving. He seemed weird, a bit shifty, on edge (my mum, who was in the car with me, also commented on it). MIL, who had clearly been drinking and was slurring, came over to the car to say hello. It was a bit awkward, but we exchanged pleasantries and she said how happy and well behaved DS had been at the gathering (which immediately struck me as odd as it was my understanding that I was picking him up as DP said he was irritable). We were polite and once DS was settled in the car we left.
Afterwards, I text DP to a) ask what that was all about and b) ask why he was staying at a gathering to socialise with people who I’d watched leave. He said I’d imagined that he was shifty, his mum wasn’t drunk, and he wasn’t staying to socialise with the people who had just left, he was staying to spend some quality time with his mum on Mother’s Day (even though he’d clearly not said this in his earlier text). This resulted in a bit of a spat via text message because I felt he’d just taken me up on my offer to pick DS up so he could get drunk with his mum and sister. By 9pm or so, he’d stopped replying to messages altogether.
The following morning, he text to ask how DS had been overnight and how he was that morning etc etc. He claimed he’d had two glasses of wine with his mum and sister, was sober, and got a cab home with his sister later that evening. Based on his previous behaviour, his relationship with alcohol (and the state of our house – practically untouched, bed not slept in, etc) I doubted he was being honest, but he insisted he’d had two drinks, he’d just wanted to stay to spend some time with his mum, and I was being completely unreasonable.
It transpires he did only have two drinks with his mum (which would take, what, an hour to drink?) and after that he then got a cab back with his sister and her boyfriend and carried on drinking with them (possibly did drugs as well). However, he only admitted to that this morning. He says it doesn’t matter because we’re not really living together at the moment and there was nothing to go home for. I’m angry because I feel like he lied about the reason why he wanted me to collect DS, he lied about what he was going to be doing at his mum’s, and he lied to me about what he did after he left his mum’s for a good couple of days. I’m confused because I don’t understand why DP is so determined to drink that he will lie about what he’s doing in order to drink, and lie about how much he’s drunk. I’m also angry because I feel like he should be making an effort to fix things with us, and lying and drinking to excess, particularly on my first Mother’s Day, is the complete opposite. Also angry because SIL was complicit once again.
AIBU?