To call other women out on ignoring my presence?

[Bluehues]

Is it just me or does anyone else experience this when out and about with their OH? It happens to me a lot! Females he knows, or even ones I've been introduced to, will approach us and talk to him as if I am invisible. It really gets to me, it's so rude! Yesterday a women called to our house to drop something off to my DH he'd ordered from her DH's business. I've met her previously at a country fair type thing a few years ago where she attempted to be crazily over familiar with DH, which he rebuffed, but she didn't once acknowledge me even though I was stood right beside him. Fast forward to yesterday and she knocks, I answer, she asks me if DH "lives here?" I felt like saying yeah he rents a room off me. DH appears in the porch (by coincidence, we were on our way out) and so she again cuts me out and speaks to him as if they're alone. Then!.., 10mins later we bump into her on our walk, she comes over the road completely ignoring my presence yet again, coo's over our baby asking my DH all about "his" baby as if he's a single parent. I butted in a few times with normal conversation but I'm starting to think I should outright ask women like her if they can see me!? She's just one example of many. Please tell me I'm not the only one this happens to, and do you call them out on it, or let it slide?

@ragged

I wondered if this was a stealth boast about OP's drop dead gorgeous hunk husband. So pretty that women can't stop talking to him.

Agreed. Given she has said thanks and acknowledged most of the PPs who have said these women obviously fancy her dp, yes has brushed off and made it clear this isn’t a problem with her attitude / something she is doing.

Yes I think its rude. I would just smile and walk off ahead.

@Bluehues

People saying me noticing rudeness means I must be insecure in my marriage, I simply can't understand your reasoning with that. I'm not insecure we have a wonderful marriage, other people fancying him wouldn't bother me at all, I just think when I've said hello, they could at least reply and then carry on lusting after him

The problem is very little, if any, of what you describe sounds problematic.

“Does x line here?” is the usual question for the circumstances. You’ve briefly met her once some time ago. There’s no reason to think she’s recognise or remember you. So she’s looking for Mr X, isn’t sure of the house, doesn’t know who you are, doesn’t know what relationship you might have to X...”Does X live here?” is a perfectly appropriate enquiry.

Yet you wanted to give her a snarky answer about renting him a room? Bizarre.

Similarly, wilfully interpreting “Isn’t your baby cute?” as singular, and therefore meaning his baby and excluding you, is, what’s the word? Batshit.

If it happens with one person, I'd think it was social awkwardness on their part - some people don't have the flexibility to adapt and go with the flow, so if she was expecting to drop something off with DH and encounters an unexpected person/situation, that might have thrown her. I've known this to happen with people because of neurodivergence and/or anxiety, stuff you might not always know about the person.

However, if it's happening with lots of different people, it might be that there's some reason they feel incredibly awkward around you. My money's on the husband flirting and perhaps not having mentioned that he's married - mentioning marital status would typically be weird in a business context, but if he's got his flirt on, he might be consciously or unconsciously giving out signals that he's available. Especially when you combine that with "come over to my house", you can see why someone who's attracted to him might have got the wrong idea (not to mention the extra effort I'd put into personal grooming before rocking up on their doorstep).

Or he's derogatory about you behind your back and they're embarrassed. Perhaps he's told them something he hadn't told you. Or something deeply personal. It could be anything. The point is, if it's lots of people doing this, it's more likely to be something DH is doing.

@ArriettyJones

coo's over our baby asking my DH all about "his" baby as if he's a single parent

She was addressing him, so she must have said “your” as in “your baby”. Which can be plural or singular. So it’s literally impossible for her to have linguistically excluded you from ownership of the baby.

Oh Bob, what a lovely Baby!

@ArriettyJones when you put it into the context of everything I said about the two encounters with her that day, I think it's pretty obvious it was part of her ignore I exist plan. Especially when she said he (our baby) was getting so big to my husband and I replied with yes he's growing up way too fast ( with a friendly smile), my husband looked at me, and agreed, she never took her eyes of my DH and asked him more questions about his baby. But like I said, that's a small part of my post

If women fantasise about your DH, then they will want you to be invisible. Your presence breaks the fantasy.

@ImInYourMindFuzz

@ragged said that was a joke! Don’t you get it?!

Oh Bob, what a lovely Baby!

That doesn’t imply that the baby is ‘ "his" baby as if he's a single parent’ though, does it?

@GinDaddyRedux

If women fantasise about your DH, then they will want you to be invisible. Your presence breaks the fantasy.

Oh stop encouraging her.

Crazy thread.

@ArriettyJones

Oh Bob, what a lovely Baby!

That doesn’t imply that the baby is ‘ "his" baby as if he's a single parent’ though, does it?

You don’t believe there are non-verbal ways to exclude someone from a conversation?

@ArriettyJones nice calling me batshit, are you reading the post in bits? I'm not annoyed she asked if DH lives with me, I mentioned it for context as I believe she knows exactly who I am (very small village) and it was a deliberate comment to separate me from him or maybe to lessen my significance in general, I don't know. My problem is that each time I spoke to her, she refused to even make eye contact with me, and I find that rude

You don’t believe there are non-verbal ways to exclude someone from a conversation?

I can believe that people are keener to talk to the DH than the OP but the slights she’s listed don’t make sense. Maybe she expects trouble because of a long ago experience and now she’s repelling them?

I don’t know... My ExH was very handsome when he was younger and tended to be grovelled around by women... I found it funny but probably because I knew who was the important woman to him (me) and he was always good at introducing me quickly if someone was blanking me out.

On the other hand, I have been in the situation were a wife I have already acknowledged feels threatened by my presence and starts acting as if she needs to establish repeatedly that’s her man... in those cases I just concentrate my attention and conversation on the jealous wife and away from the husband who was my boss, a colleague or even a close friend I have known for all my life.

It is all about politeness... but I guess in this case is about gaming your own insecurities or train your husband to include you in the conversation rather than letting other women blank you out.

@ariettyJones, that's like saying your experience is wrong, my interpretation of your experience is right.

Seriously.

Why do people give OPs such a hard time!

You may think she's sensitive. Maybe she is, but these things do happen.

So take the OP at her word and let her figure out in time if she needs to be more resilient and less sensitive.

Telling somebody else that their own account of their experience is wrong and that you can tell them what more likely happened is not an emotionally mature response.

You were not the only culprit to do just that on this thread though.

It is a sport on mumsnet now.

OP shows up, gives the reasons why they're upset and a bandwagon forms to tell the OP she's WRONG. They weren't there. They don't know anybody. But because it wouldn't happen to them, and if it did, it wouldn't (allegedly) bother them, then the OP must be WRONG in her own account of what happened to her

It is so tedious.

It makes every thread the same.

I started a thread a few years ago about the exact same thing. It happens quite a lot. It’s so bloody rude. It’s like you’re invisible. I always wonder why they do it. Mind you there’s certain men I know who do that too, never look at me and try and include me in the conversations. Just rude ignorant fuckers.

@TheMotherofAllDilemmas exactly, most people can read what's going on and just ''adjust'' a little.

@heartsonacake

It doesn't make me feel insecure or jealous, I just don't like rude people

Okay, so let’s break it down.

Fast forward to yesterday and she knocks, I answer, she asks me if DH "lives here?"

What’s the problem with this? If you‘ve only met her once before, several years ago, she probably isn’t going to remember you and was double checking she had the right address.

so she again cuts me out and speaks to him as if they're alone.

Or it’s just that she saw she had the right address and had found the right person so conversed with them over the matter at hand.

She didn’t refuse to acknowledge you. She didn’t ignore you. She just didn’t have anything more to say to you.

she comes over the road completely ignoring my presence yet again, coo's over our baby asking my DH all about "his" baby as if he's a single parent.

It is his baby. Just as it’s your baby. Being his baby doesn’t also stop it being your baby. You are oversensitive here.

I butted in a few times with normal conversation but I'm starting to think I should outright ask women like her if they can see me!?

Butting in is rude behaviour from you. She doesn’t know you, you’ve only met once, and in this climate not hanging around for too much social chit chat is best.

You don’t have to be involved in every conversation your partner is. He is allowed his own friendships and relationships with others without your input.

I stand by my initial assessment and really can’t see that she did anything wrong or was being rude at all. It’s all in your head.

Agree with this. I struggle to see how she referred to the baby as “his” if she wasn’t speaking to you. Who else was there? Was she with someone else? Did your husband converse with this other person? I think with conversations, you get out what you put in. If you find this happens to you often, I’d say you’re the common denominator.

I had this once after having ds. He was very young (about 2 weeks old) and we were out Christmas shopping, bumped into a girl do had went to uni with, out shopping with her mum. She didn't even glance in my direction. Her mum was lovely and she spoke to me and asked a few questions to both of us about the baby, but it her daughter completely blanked me, I think it made her mum feel a bit awkward because you could see she was purposely trying to ignore me and DS and just stared at do or the wall anytime I spoke. Very odd, but I found it more amusing than annoying.

@AllTheUsermamesAreAlreadyTaken for goodness sake, I spoke to her directly, and she ignored me, she refused to speak to me about our baby and would only speak to DH. DH tried in vain to include me. It was painfully obvious that she was acting as if I wasn't there. I did put in to the conversation directly to her, and got nothing back, not even eye contact

[quote Bluehues]@AllTheUsermamesAreAlreadyTaken for goodness sake, I spoke to her directly, and she ignored me, she refused to speak to me about our baby and would only speak to DH. DH tried in vain to include me. It was painfully obvious that she was acting as if I wasn't there. I did put in to the conversation directly to her, and got nothing back, not even eye contact[/quote]
How did she refer to the baby as his? Who else was there? X

@ariettyJones, that's like saying your experience is wrong, my interpretation of your experience is right.

No it isn’t. It’s reading the words OP has written and realising they don’t make sense. But she’s now started drip feeding extra information she left out originally, so it’s going to be one of “those” threads, clearly.

You sound like a crazy person to be honest. You're annoyed that people who know your husband speak to your husband instead of you. You say you kept butting in but she didn't get the hint - maybe people don't like you because you're being rude?! You sound awful.
This woman doesn't sound like she's done anything wrong. Your husband ordered something so she brought it to his house and asked if he lived there - what do you think she was supposed to do?! Then he came to the porch and she spoke to him, because she knows him and was there to see him. She wasn't there to see you, you didn't order anything, why would she be speaking to you? You're not involved. Then I'm a bit confused because there's no grammatical way in which she could be talking to your husband and say "his". That's not actually possible so you need to explain what was actually said. As in, she can't say "is this his baby?" to him, she would say "is this your baby?". "Your" could apply to both of you - so I just think you're creating this. Then you kept rudely butting in to make it about yourself, when it has nothing to do with you. If you make a habit of behaving like this then I wouldn't like you or want to interact with you either. I can only assume you were rude to her the first time you met her so maybe that's why she's not super friendly.
It sounds to me like you're very paranoid and controlling. You need to stop looking for reasons to be angry at women and creating problems. I think you're the problem here.

Ahhhh so it's never happened to the other posters so it must be you that's the problem eh? Jesus wept!

It's never happened to me either, but it's happens all the time to a friend of mine and her husband.

He's a 6ft 3 ex football player and he has women fawning over him while my friend is there. He just gets embarrassed, girls even give him their telephone numbers while my friend is standing beside him. I was absolutely flabbergasted when she told me. She wasn't jealous she's drop dead gorgeous, and found it amusing at first but now it annoys her.

Maybe it's an age thing, this couple are in their 30s?

Some people really have no shame. I'm not sure what you can do about it, except feel sorry for them!!