i need a rant so please bear with me.
What is with people (i.e. my “d”p) who refuse or don’t bother to make decisions, leaving the entire burden on you to do so (talking things like holiday planning, organising budgets, joint savings and other finances, meal planning, even what to do on the weekend) and then they get pissy after the fact (sometimes way after) because you - the one who is always left to actually make the decisions/book the tickets/pay the bills/etc or it won’t happen - are “controlling”, don’t let them have ansay etc.
For the record I used to be indecisive and I think I’m a massive people pleaser. I always feel like I need someone else to “approve” before I book something, etc. For a holiday in the recent past I spent ages researching all possible flights, hotels, itineraries, budgets- repeatedly put them in front of dp hoping he’d opine on what he liked. Always the same vague “they all look good”. It ended up costing about a third more because we had left it so late. It was an amazing holiday but he recently threw it back in a row that I’d “just picked all the hotels/etc I liked” and he hadn’t had a say. He also was presented with a list of about 100 wedding venues in a 2 hour radius of us so we could pick and set up viewings. Again, he picked none. We ended up visiting some, picked a gorgeous one that he really liked. Now it’s all “you took control of our wedding planning, I didn’t get a say”. All of this really feeds my anxiety/people pleasing and lose confidence to plan or suggest anything.
I do accounts for a living, we are now combining our finances and I have recently worked out all our upcoming regular and one off expenses and how much we could afford to save for a big purchase in the next 2 years. Have offered to take him through this spreadsheet several times to see if he agrees with the figures. He either is too tired or not engaged. We are as a result a month behind on our savings target as we have yet to transfer direct debits, get our joint account etc. Whenever I raise the joint savings etc he tells me to stop being controlling, he wants “his say” etc- but he has no interest in crunching the numbers with me. If he ever does take an interest he seems happy and he never disagrees, but will throw back in arguments that I’m controlling everything.
For me, it feels like I can’t win. He is either passive aggressively refusing to engage because he disagrees, or he feels guilty that he never does anything, or he resents being so dependent on me to do the heavy lifting. Or all of the above. I keep asking for input, getting nothing, then down the line getting shit for having made the decisions. Might I add that he generally finds women in charge annoying - his SIL and Mum are “nags”, any assertive woman on tv is “annoying”, etc. His mum advised me to “let him think he’s in charge, men like it”. What is it - the 1950s?!?
I’ve half a mind to stop planning our jointly-wanted nice holiday next year until the next time he brings it up. By which time the prices will no doubt have skyrocketed.
Aibu?!?