To not want to go to another couplesy dinner

[twiney]

DP has a very good and old friend and today is his birthday. We're invited round for dinner.

I dont want to go this evening. Reasons:

I'm tired and today is my only full day and night off as I'll need to do some work tomorrow.
I just fancy a night in.
We had dinner with them a fortnight ago.
We'll be expected around 7.30pm and then the night will go on and on until about 2am.
I have no way of leaving earlier as its out in the sticks.

I just dont understand why I am expected. They're nice enough but I dont have much in common with them.

Why cant DP just go and celebrate his mate's birthday with him and leave me to it. Why is there an expectation when you are a couple that you do "Couplesy Dinners"?

Disclaimer: all of DPs friends are real home bods. So for example theres no (and believe me I've tried): going out to eat, going down to the pub, going to the cinema, anything, even coming to mine. Its always going to theirs to eat for a long drawn out dinner, which to me feels boring and claustrophobic.

AIBU to feel this way and want to stay home?

It is very very difficult having cross cultural rs because of different expectations. This is reinforced massively when you have dcs. Just a word to the wise from someone who wished she'd known this 20 years ago. Fight for your boundaries and if he can't take that then that's your red flag and route to freedom. This does sound that serious I'm very sorry to say. Good luck.

Ps also you sound fun and great and also like you're being flattened. Fight for your feistiness fun and sparkle. It's a tragedy when they extinguish that.

Stop doing all the wifework!
(Are you seriously telling us you do all the cleaning and laundry at his place?)

Tell him you don't enjoy these dinners, especially for the long times he likes, so you'll decide about each invite at the time without a strop, and he can get used to it.

Op another vote for you not being the problem. And next time point out it's not "just" dinner. You're staying the night!

What would happen if you said i'm sorry but I'm so tired I need to go home now or I need to sleep, then you fall asleep in the sitting room?

That's exactly what I would have done.

Btw, he wasn't being reasonable, in the discussion you had afterwards. He was still trying to pressure you into going along with exactly what he wants in future. He had no reason to stay out till 5.30am, when you had good reasons not to do that, except to impose his will on you.

Think hard about how you'll set things up if you move in together.

Time to have two separate discussions. The first about how labour will be divided fairly (and money too). I'd decide what I wanted and present that.

Secondly I'd set ground rules for attending and hosting (shiver) parties. He arranged them knowing you dislike them and then stays all fecking night? He's more concerned with getting his social life exactly as he wants it regardless of the cost to you. I think it's odd to only socialise with his friends with you there 100% of the time. I'd be up for this four times a year max IF they was a suitably reciprocal arrangement back from your oh.

I would give zero fucks if someone cancelled last minute.

I think you really, really need to think this moving in together over again.
Especially if you 'support him financially'. I don't have a problem with a higher earning partner paying an agreed upon 'more' into the household or one partner doing a bit more agreed upon domestic labour, but I do have a problem with a huge unfair imbalance or inequity. Especially when it's coupled with coercion to do things one really doesn't want to do.

Have you discussed household financial contributions? Division of domestic labour? Can you trust him to hold up his end of these agreements? Because it sounds to me as if you have the makings of a real cocklodger.

Why don't you stand up for yourself OP? Why do you always capitulate?

Oh this is really sad. It started so light hearted and it turns out your partner is basically horrible to you, and you are accepting his faux victim hood and blaming yourself. This is awful, awful, awful.

He is taking no interest in your perspective, and has no compassion for you. When he recognises there is a problem, he thinks it's your problem to solve.

I initially was going to say the problem isn't being stuck in someone else's house for dinner, it just sounds like his friends are horrible - sidelining you, mocking you, boring on about their shared history which you can't join in with. But actually it's so much worse: your partner doesn't care about you. He just wants to keep doing the things that make him happy, for you to fit in, and not complain.

She seems to have disappeared, I hope she is OK.

I haven't disappeared, I'm here, it's just I'm struggling with this new spin on events, and sad you are saddened by my thread.

I've kicked off about once a month like this over these dinner parties.

Every time he has reacted, and I have felt afterwards, like some kind of emotional abuser. I thought it was sick he feels the need to walk on eggshells/nervous of a kick off, just for being invited to one of his friends houses for dinner.

Its made me feel like a monster, like an abusive and unfair person ruining my boyfriend's happy go lucky disposition.

Now you're making me rethink that narrative.

I still dont think its right to blow up at someone but you're making me rethink it.

Good for you x

Refusal to engage or make a decision is passive-aggression, and is just as insidious and ruinous to a relationship as shouting and blowing up.

If you have had these arguments with him at least once a month, then why isn't anything changing? Why is he emotionally blackmailing you into attending with him when he knows that you don't enjoy going? It's particularly interesting that you don't expect - or insist - that he joins you when you see your friends, so why does he expect you to fall in line with his demands? They are demands by the way - just because he doesn't get stroppy doesn't make them any less insistent?

Your comment about doing all the 'wifework' is very telling. He thinks the relationship is great because you run round after him, yet you are dissatisfied and unhappy. I have to say that I think moving in with him is not a good idea. How do you see things improving if you are living together full time? Are you hoping that he is going to magically 'get it' and notice that you're doing all the heavy lifting - and step up to help? Or do you think it's more likely that things will carry on the way that they have been, and you will fester with resentment and blow up every so often?

In your shoes I would be backing out of the lease and sitting down and having a frank chat with your partner. He needs to stop manipulating you into spending time with people that you don't want to socialise with, and he needs to step up in terms of the shit-work of every day life rather than leaving it all to you. If he can't consistently do both of those things then I would be ending the relationship.

The phrases you use like “stropping” and “kicking off” belittle yourself. If you want to spend less time on this kind of socialising, do so. He can go alone on most occasions. Similarly, if he wants to host and it’s too frequent or inconvenient for you he should make other plans.

Agree with PPs that, assuming you proceed with moving in together money and chores should be joint, and stop subsidising him. Should you break up you will really need your money to leave France.

Twiney, if you are anywhere near Paris then feel free to PM me if you want to have a drink/rant some time.

Hey twiney, hope you are okay? Have you had the chance to talk to DP yet or are you going to wait til it comes up again? What’s your partner like in the rest of the relationship? Is he loving and gorgeously French?

It sounds a bit like a lifestyle change described by that journalist who thought she was so beautiful in the DM. She moved out to be with a French man and struggled to acceptvthe culturally different expectations. If you can find her name her articles are probably online still. Was it Samantha Brick...?

Aha, she was batshit crazy though...? I think she would have struggled to adapt to any kind of real world reality, in any country tbh.

If you were stopping him from going at all, that would be verging on abusive. But you just don't want to go there every single time and stay till the early hours and I don't blame you. He's being a twat about it and not listening.

@LoveInTokyo
What a nice offer! I'm not too far from Paris and may well drop you a line next time I'm there. Just don't invite me over for dinner, eh?

It's absolutely not a cultural issue. I was partly brought up in francophone countries, so there's no language barrier or cultural pitfalls, more like I just miss the life I had in the UK.

Yes, he is gorgeous although that's kind of irrelevant. He's a patient, gentle person, steady, insightful and funny, a hard worker (he earns less because his work is unskilled, not because he's lazy).

I just feel like a terrible person, like an aggressive, catastrophic person who makes life difficult for sunny, easy going him.

The crux of it is I feel like I've had to change a lot of things for this to work, and although I appreciate him saying he was always very upfront about who he was and his life priorities etc, I feel like he also knew what he was getting with me. It feels like he doesn't fully appreciate that sometimes it's difficult, to have made all.these changes. He says he gets it, and that just because he doesnt say anything doesnt mean he doesnt know. I feel like if I had a very financially capable man who moved to my town and did my cooking and washing and integrated with my life, I'd be feeling pretty happy go lucky too.

Part of my reasons for wanting to move in together was then there are no muddied boundaries as there are now (where its technically my place, so technically Im responsible for stuff). In a shared place, there cant be any shirking.

I'm a bit confused about things. On the surface I feel guilty about my "stropping" (and yes, it is an unhealthy word). But in my gut, I still feel there's an injustice.

After that row and conversation, theres no way, if I were him, that I would then have let the night go on until 5.30.

Need to do some more thinking. I'll be away for Christmas, will be good to get some space.

Thanks for all your insight! X

I just feel like a terrible person, like an aggressive, catastrophic person who makes life difficult for sunny, easy going him.

Think carefully about spending your life with someone who makes you feel like that about yourself

Just let me know.

(Re dinner: I tend to cook dreadful British food a lot anyway!)

"In a shared place thete can't be any shirking"

Have you read much of the Relationships bosrd ? It is chock full of women who live with men who do fuck all of the shitwork.

I would say i have terrible headache and not go. End of

How much has he changed/sacrificed for your relationship, OP?