DH’s weekend away

[DesperateHousewifeOfSW4]

DH is lovely and a wonderful father to our 2 year old who idolises him. However he has a very senior role, works ALL THE TIME, often abroad, and we barely see him. I am a SAHM and it is quite lonely. DD misses him terribly and cries for Daddy several times a day.

Recently DH’s siblings suggested they all go abroad together for a weekend without partners. None of them have kids or demanding jobs. I vetoed it on the grounds that it would mean a long stretch for DD without seeing DH. I suggested they could all go out together for a night locally instead, or we could all do a weekend together with partners and DD included. Siblings seemed unimpressed with these alternatives and nothing has been booked.

DH disappointed and thinks I’m being unreasonable. I understand he needs some fun and time with his family but given their comparative lack of commitments I think they could compromise a bit. I also don’t feel that charitable towards his family as they’ve never bothered with DD much.

AIBU to veto the weekend away?

Pictish - who gives a fuck that there are hundreds of you or that you're regular posters?

Your tenure or lack of means fuck all to me. Your posts do not get special attention because you're a regular.

Next question...or fuck right off?

No more questions, ta, you have my permission to fuck right off.

I just think you need to be realistic that if you have a demanding career and young children, everyone else should take a back seat for a few years.

A few years. That's crazy. In that time such restrictions can lead to the demise of the marriage.

Even if you have a demanding job and small children...going away one weekend a year is not unreasonable.

There is no written rule that parents can't leave children under a certain age for a weekend, while the other parent...or someone else looks after them.

Being married with kids doesn't mean you can't have fun without your spouse and DC, if it exceeds more than a few hours.

If your DH was one who had many weekdays on a hobby and went drinking with friends regularly...leaving you home that would be different.

Children aren't meant to be a noose around your neck preventing this sort of activity.

Pp have mentioned the OP coming along with DD. Why would you have a spouse and child on siblings weekend. It's like having the groom at a hen night.

When I'm away with my siblings we often talk about our parents, funny things when we were kids...we have our own family jokes and we may also talk about our marriages and our in-laws. A spouse being there would change the
dynamics and restrict our conversation in order not to make the spouse feel left out.

We'd all feel the need to muck in with our niece as well.

We really only want each other there....equally when I've gone away for a spa weekend with SIL...I don't want my brother there. It's our ladies only time.

I don't understand why people think a person has a right to time off on holidays without family, if you get married and start a family you basically lose the right to that sort of thing until you retire

Wow. That's the law according to who?

Lose the right to go on holiday alone!!!! I'm gobsmacked... .but I will say as long as you and your spouse agree with that...It's fine. If it works for you no problem.

It wouldn't work for me and I would find it stifling and controlling.

There's really nothing I did as a single person that I was unable/ not allowed to do when I got married and had DC.

It needed more advanced planning and money on childcare...but being as though I havent been detained at HMP... I can do what I want to.

but being as though I havent been detained at HMP... I can do what I want to

You can't though, when you have small children. Or not unilaterally, anyway. Surely that's the point. You have to have the agreement of someone else to look after them and your plans automatically impinge on someone else's. When you're a single person, you can please yourself on a whim. When you have kids, you have to organise someone else to look after them. (Same for fathers as well, I may add)

Must have been a charming post to have been deleted by MNHQ. Too bad I didn't see it.

You can't though, when you have small children. Or not unilaterally, anyway. Surely that's the point. You have to have the agreement of someone else to look after them and your plans automatically impinge on someone else's

The person to look after them is their dad. Of course I would look at a convenient date...not when he already has plans. It wouldn't be a case of I'm going away next weekend. I sensibly plan these things and give notice, ad would the friends I'm going with as we all have kids.

The difference in this case of the OP...is that no date is convenient because DD misses her dad all the time and she thinks a whole weekend is unreasonable whenever it would take place.

My DH could and did go away for weekends and holidays when we had small kids, so did I .. if he suddenly decided I couldn't go for no reason other than the kids would miss me, we wouldn't have made it to 20 years of marriage.

I may have sought alternative childcare (DM) and still gone anyway .....but I wouldn't be happy that I was forced to ask her because he'd refused.

It has to be balanced. I wouldn't expect it not to swing both ways.

The key is a better work life balance. The impact of DD not seeing her dad much is because of him working long hours, 6 days a week on a permanent basis and not this one off weekend.

His working hours aren't compatible for most relationships, talk less of when you have children.

Its not the UK so I don't know what the employment laws are in the country in question...but I don't see employment contracts with what sounds like working way over 60 hours a week and I've worked for over 2 decades in HR.

I do know the actual demands of a job can often be more than the contracted hours, but if the job requires the excessive hours constantly and not just in peak times, then there's a problem with the job itself.

Working that much just leads to burnout and is bad for your wellbeing.

To me it's about being clear on your priorities and objectives for how you spend your time.

For me it's starts with how much time do you want your children to have with you, then you can work back from that to see how much time you have left to devote to career, other family, friends etc and allocate it up as you see fit.

I'm not sure if this is true of OP's husband but the trap I see too many people (mostly husbands in my experience) just plod along doing their thing, still working all hours like they used to before they had children and still trying to shoehorn in as many social activities as they can.

The losers are the children who miss out on the influence of that parent and the partner who is stuck at home doing the care.

It's easy to rationalise away "one night out" or "one weekend away" but sometimes when you step back and look at the whole picture, and work out how someone is spending their time (really break it down into percentages) it doesn't always align with their priorities.

And sorry my point was that we all only have 168 hours a week so we need to make tough choices about where we spend our time if we want our lives to be consistent with our priorities and objectives.

Personally I have a challenging but financially rewarding career that I want to pursue, but for my children's sake, they get pretty much all of my time outside of that. I do see friends and other family occasionally but not as much as I'd like. But that's the trade off for me. If it got intolerable then I'd find a different job rather than cut down my children's time with me, because I know how much time a week I want them to get with me.

I can understand your point of view OP. It’s the fact that he is showing you that his siblings are important enough for him to take holiday from work, and you and DD are not .

Perhaps you could do whàt the siblings have done- research a weekend away for the 3 of you around a quiet work period, and tell him what you’re planning to confirm dates.

Sandy I take your point - but I think the thing with these sort of jobs is that they're almost inherently not compatible with "normal" family life (or certainly not with what people would regard as shared parenting). This sort of thing comes up here all the time, usually in the context of "no one needs a SAHP". I honestly think it's impossible to understand what it's like in that environment if you haven't worked in it. There's no such thing as "annual leave" in the way people understand it on here! But on the flip side....you get paid many multiples of what you would in a "normal" job. Which can be enough to set up your family for life. But then the set up you have is, almost by definition, quite extreme.....and therefore so are some of the decisions you make as a family.

Not sure if that makes sense....but I can certainly see where the OP is coming from here. That said, I've been on both sides of this, pre kids and post kids as the SAHP....and I can certainly see how her DH feels like he needs a genuine break/bit of time to himself. So it's a tricky one.

Cracks me up when posters say they have consulted their H and therefore his opinion must carry more weight

When I was with ex, I sometimes discussed a thread with him. Not because he was a man, but simply because he was another adult who happened to be there at the time who I could discuss something with. And no I didn't think his opinion carried more weight.

Yanbu at all op. The thing is you and your dh have gotten used to this arrangement of spending lengths of time apart, but in the middle of it is a 2yo who doesnt understand. For your dh its just a weekend away but for her it just makes that distance seem even longer. Why arent partners or families included in this. What exactly are they going to do?