DH is refusing to buy me medicine

[bloodyperiod1]

DH (as in dickhead right now) is at a mates house 10 mins away, and has refused to buy me paracetamol for my cramps, my period is due next week and I always get these awful cramps before my period. It hurts, I can’t sleep. Kids in bed, corner shop down the road from me and he says I should wait til he gets home, and he doesn’t know when he’s leaving. Shop is closing 11pm. He’s got a car and it will literally take him 2mins to come here. AIBU to think he’s being inconsiderate?

expecting your DH to cut short his time with his friend because you didn’t plan ahead is both controlling & kinda pathetic really

God, do people really live their lives like this? This is what they expect from a partner? Hope this is just the usual argumentative shit because I would feel sorry for that pathetic poster if I felt this is all she expected and got from life.

• you can certainly see why Thatcher got in power and stayed in power though. Lots of people love sticking it to ... those who need help

I bet the H in this case is happy to reap the benefit of the organisation the OP brings to his life, an example of which was the fact that she was at home with the children, which allowed him to swan off for his night out. She was probably organised enough to prepare dinner for the family, probably does the family laundry, grocery shopping list, keeping the family calendar, etc., as study after study has found the vast majority of women do.

................
It strikes me that it was very odd indeed for him to take the car to a location ten minutes walk away. I wonder if he wasn't at his mate's house but maybe further afield and not the mate the OP thinks he was with either. Hence the refusal to help his wife...

There is always the chance that breast feeding can fail or face difficulties.

But is there always the chance that a husband would simply say 'Your problem', turn over and fall asleep regardless of the drying baby?

Because if such callousness and laziness is a widespread thing why do we bother with men at all? And how are we ending up with such selfish oafs masquerading as men in our society?

Hearhoovesthinkzebras
I would find it odd in the extreme if my husband's friend's wife contacted me to tell me that her husband wouldn't go and get me some paracetamol. If I really wanted to moan I would speak to one of my friends.

How do you know the mates's wife isn't a friend of hers too? Or at least someone she knows, someone she has entertained at her house, someone she has seen at the pub? How do you know the topic couldn't come up in the course of a general conversation...

Same as if one of my friends husband's calked me to complain about his wife isn't it? Should I sympathise with him and have a go at his wife for doing whatever he was upset about?

The assumption that the OP has her life and her husband has his, complete with separate sets of friends,maybe based on your own life experience, goes far to explain your stance on this thread.

At the very least, a chat with the mate's wife might establish whether he really was at his house that night.

Do you think the mate might think less of the H if he knew he had basically told his wife to suck up her excruciating pain because he preferred to sit on his arse all night in the mate's house?

mathanxiety- if the OP’s marriage is that awful that she needs to call her dh’s friend’s wife to tell her that her dh wouldn’t fetch her paracetamol at 10pm and to check he was where he said he was, then her marriage is seriously shit and she shouldn't be with him. It’s a massive leap to conclude all that from the extremely limited and one-sided information given, though. If I was contacted by someone complaining about their husband and clearly wanting to involve me in their marital disagreements, I would want to know the dh’s side of the story, too (but would mainly wonder why they deal with their arguments in such a toxic way).

People in normal, happy relationships do not generally trash each other to their mutual friends to “let them know what sort of gent they are associating with.” How very unpleasant and obnoxious. I would hate my dh to get in touch with our mutual friends just so that he could complain about me. And surely it was you assuming they did not have mutual friends, given that you were wanting the OP to contact the dh’s wife to make her aware what shit friends he had?? Would you really do that to mutual friends?! And over paracetamol? Or should she add in to the conversation that he was also selfish once over formula milk and that this shows a clear and extensive pattern of abuse? And that she therefore thinks he was actually being unfaithful and not even where he said he was?

*friend’s wife

And the OP was not in excruciating pain. She slept through the night and woke up a bit sore the next morning. That is not “excruciating” pain. It’s the sort of pain it would have been nice to have a mild painkiller for and for which the dh should have obliged, but his failure to do so is not clear evidence that he sits on his fat arse all night while his wife cleans the skidmarks off his pants and practically dies of excruciating pain alone - we need more context to make a judgement.

I begged DH to go out and buy formula, he refused and told me to ‘ keep trying’. It was in the middle of the night, no shops open and nearest petrol station was 10 mins away

Does your local petrol station sell formula milk?

If your child is regularly taking formula, why didn't you have any in? If the baby had never taken formula, trying it for the first time in the middle of the night on a baby who was already struggling to feed, doesn't sound like the best idea.

If he is so selfish, maybe you need to consider if staying in the marriage is the right thing to do.

Your OP said you always get these awful cramps...then later you say it's not usually so bad. It does seem like you're adding bits to make him seem worse. Or maybe he is that bad and having more than one child with him once you saw what he was like was a mistake.

Only you know if you're ultimately happy with the marriage and if you can express how his actions make you feel.

If I called my DH to get medication, he would...because it's not something I've done before and he would know I was in a very bad way and would abandon his night out.

Can't believe there are people who wouldn't hop in the car for maximum 10 minutes (to the shop, make purchase, drop at house, back to friend's) to do something for their spouse. How hard is it to say to friends I'll be back in 10 minutes?

Apileofballyhoo - honestly, if he could do all that in 10 minutes, then she could have done all that in 30 seconds and the kids would never have known she had gone out!

If she also has a car, perhaps. But probably more like 6 or 7 minutes (even with a car) and any of the DC might have woken up. Even if the DH had taken 15 minutes, is it a big deal? The night wasn't over till much later anyhow.

My DH would do it for me and I would do it for him. We don't punish each other for forgetting to get something from the shops.

honestly, if he could do all that in 10 minutes, then she could have done all that in 30 seconds and the kids would never have known she had gone out!

Honestly, I can't believe posters are actually saying she should risk leaving her children home alone at night rather than to ask her DH for help.

Apileofballyhoo - I would do it for my dh, he would do it for me - but in this situation, I would not have contacted my dh about it in the first place, as I would not have considered it sufficiently serious to bother him, given how rare it is that either of us has an evening out on our own with friends. So, context still matters. And I should imagine it would have been more like 30 minutes that he would have been out, as cars really do not save much time on short journeys, what with having to find parking spots, demist the car because it’s a cold evening, etc. It really doesn’t help to deliberately underestimate what you expect of someone else when making a point about how selfish they are, especially when people might be inclined to agree with you if being more realistic, anyway.

Geshwister - honestly, I can’t believe sone people are so dim that they think anyone believes it’s possible to do something in 30 seconds...

Walkaround there's presumably a cart load of poetic licence in your 30 seconds.

If the husband was 2 minutes drive away it would take them both about the same ten minutes to fetch the medicine. The difference being that he would be leaving his adult friends unaccompanied for ten minutes and she would have left small sleeping children alone for ten minutes.

Some posters are so pathetically determined to prove themselves cool girlfriend/ wives that they're insisting that it's worse for a man to leave his adult friends alone for ten minutes than for a woman to leave small children asleep alone in a house for ten minutes.

if he could do all that in 10 minutes, then she could have done all that in 30 seconds and the kids would never have known she had gone out!

You're getting better and better.

A) the shop may well be closer to friends than to OP's home

B) leaving young children alone in the home not to disturb husband's time with friends?
Might as well wake up the eldest and send them to the shop instead.

I honestly can't believe people are so against the OP here.

Okay. Just asked the DH.

Me: Hypothetical. You’re at Pete’s, I’m home with the kids. They’re in bed. I feel a bit off with my time of the month. I go to the cabinet and can’t find the paracetamol. I should have already stocked up, but didn’t and now I’m stuck home and in pain. I message you and ask if you wouldn’t mind swinging by the shop for me as I can’t leave the house. Shop closes at 11, it’s now about 10. What do you say?

DH: Is this a MumsNet hypothetical?

Me: Yes. You say?

DH: That I’ll pick some up or give you the box from the car when I get in.

Me: even though I should have planned ahead and bought them but I didn’t, so it’s my own stupid fault?

DH: Um, yes? Jesus, is that the answer everyone is giving? Leave you in pain to learn to be more organised?

Me: Haha, yeah. That’s the jist of it.

@Emmelina well your DH said he'll give you some when he gets in, like the OPs DH...

Also he's going to say the 'right' thing if he knows you're responding to Mumsnet isn't he.

@GiveHerHellFromUs except he didn't bring any in . OP had to go buy them the next morning.

@PanicAndRun oh I know I'm just saying that @Emmelina seems to see her husband as superior when he answered in the exact same way as OPs husband (regardless of the fact he didn't actually follow through with his promise because he was a dick)

The cartload of poetic licence actually didn’t involve genuinely suggesting the OP should have got the paracetamol from the shop herself, ffs. The impossibility of getting there and back in 30 seconds should have made that bloody obvious. It was pointing out how equally ridiculous it is to suggest that someone can go out in their car to a shop, buy paracetamol, go to their dw’s house and deliver paracetamol and then return to where they started in 10 minutes. It’s the ridiculous exaggeration of what is likely to have been the case that are the main problem of this thread, because people are deliberately ignoring actual meanings and focusing on the ridiculous.

Also, I would like someone to point to the posts where people said it was actually reasonable of the dh to refuse to get his dw paracetamol? I haven’t read many, just lots suggesting she shouldn’t have phoned, or needed to phone, him in the first place, which are generally unsympathetic and dubious it was all that clear cut, and some extremely hyperbolic, but not actually saying the same thing at all. They are focussing on her behaviour and not commenting at all on his.

And as for telling his mates or their wives what a git he is, as per mathanxiety’s suggestion, if this dh’s mates are anything like him and he really is a git, and they were, eg, playing a card game, computer game, or board game and it was his turn, or were in the middle of watching a film, I doubt they would be saying what a git he was and they would all have been happy to wait for him for 30 mins. People don’t tend to have friends so completely different from themselves.

So I still say we do not know enough about the context for anyone to take such extreme views about the vileness of the man or the uselessness of the woman. The whole scenario sounds like everyone involved lost their temper, the OP vented on mumsnet and then went to bed. It’s really not a case of obvious male or female domestic abuse, male privilege or any other such things. Nobody knows enough about these people to come to such incredible conclusions.

YANBU but make sure you stock up so it won't happen again

No game or film or - LOL board game - can be paused.

Right.

And all of those things are more important than the fact that someone is in serious pain and could be helped if he put in a little effort.

He might even have borrowed a few paracetamol or Ibuprofen tablets from the mate and bypassed the corner shop entirely, making his errand of mercy even shorter than the two minutes each way drive plus up to five minutes allowed for parking and finding the paracetamol at the corner shop/paying for it.

It's so unthinkable that a home should be without otc painkillers that he was bound to find some at the mate's...

At this point, I am wondering what threshold of pain or blood loss or other medical emergency might pass the 'Get up and help your wife' test?

(Sulking and stonewalling are abusive, btw.)