DH just apologised

[TheBells]

For something that happened over a year ago. The apology came up during a discussion which brought back memories of 'the incident', and honestly, for the entire time from then until today I've been wondering whether or not I was just being too sensitive. Tonight, he told me that he was entirely in the wrong. I'm interested to know who the MN jury would deem as guilty in this case. (Name changed to avoid any bias).

So around December 2018 DH had severe stomach pain, called 111 and was advised to go to A&E. He was anxious, and asked if I would go with him. We have twins, who at the time were five and a bit months old. Normally I wouldn't mention my twins for fear of being called a troll but I believe it's relevant in this context. MIL had been staying with us for Christmas. DH asked me to come with him to the hospital and leave DTs with MIL. Now she's not the worst person in the world, but she is on many medications and prone to epileptic seizures. Despite this, for some crazy reason, I decided to answer DH's plea for help and left sleeping DTs with her. It was quite late at night so I hoped they would just sleep through, and in fairness, they did.

DH became very grumpy when we were waiting at the hospital. I was trying to engage him in playing silly games on the phone or to chat about shit to take his mind off things. Yet, he said I had a face like a slapped arse. He was annoyed whenever I asked him to check in with his mother to see if the babies were okay. He told me he wished he never asked me to come, because I'd been so anxious the whole time and not focused on him as much as he would have wanted. After being diagnosed with kidney stones, I drove him back home in the early hours, babies were fine, I was exhausted, end of story. But since then, I felt bad for 'behaving' that way at the hospital.

Tonight, during a discussion, he recalled that time, and told me that he was sorry for being such a dick. That he should have understood that I was anxious about my young babies, and that he was lucky I stayed with him not just in A&E but in general after the fact.

What's the verdict? Should I have LTB? Did he need to apologise or did I? Were we both in the wrong? One thing I do know for sure is that if I was ever put in the same position again, I would choose to stay with my babies.

@TheBells

The topic only got raised because right now his niece is experiencing a very similar issue. He thinks his niece should stay with her baby and let her husband go to the hospital. Which made him think about his decision all that time ago. I didn't bring it up.

I also find this aspect interesting. So he didn't think he did anything wrong, until someone else (another woman incidentally) made the opposite decision and he decided she was wrong.

@Waveysnail

Are you second guessing your plan for leaving? I'd talk to your counsellor and womans aid

I'm ashamed to say yes. I am absolutely second guessing myself, because the man he is now is exactly the man I fell in love with. Every rational part of me is screaming that it's all fake and not to fall for it. I believe, hope that logic will prevail.

I have been working with Solace women's aid and my family support worker. It was my support worker that noticed the red flags initially. During therapy, which was meant to be CBT to get past my OCD behaviours, my therapist eventually told me quite bluntly that I am in a controlling and abusive relationship. She could no longer provide treatment for me, because her work was being undermined whenever my H told me that I was getting worked up over nothing, and that any concerns I had about anything were to do with me having OCD, and he'd also keep checking if I'd been taking my medication. At that point in time, I felt as though everything was my fault, that I was a drain on my husband and children and that I should just end it all. With the support I've been getting, I've recently been able to begin sorting through what is and is not appropriate in a normal relationship.

So, in essence, I don't need to be told to LTB because that's already my plan. I don't want to fail my children by going backwards.

I just wanted to see if this specific incident was an example of abuse, or whether we were just having a reasonable disagreement. I want to know what's normal.

@TheBells

I also need a bit of clarity about the faux-pas of me trying to distract him with games and idle chit chat. When I was in hospital for pre-eclampsia, DH downloaded games to sit and play with me while I was scared. I genuinely believed I was returning the kindness. I'm getting the impression that it would have been better for me to sit in silence and occasionally check if he's still in pain.

Perhaps I could have called MIL myself. But I know that if I was waiting around in A&E while my young babies were with my DM, I'd call her occasionally to check without needing prompting. I didn't badger him. He was angry that I wanted to check at all, not that I wanted to check repeatedly.

OP yes, in the context of a loving normal relationship all this would be something that would be worked out, understood. The little things, I mean - the mis-step with game playing or whatever... in a normal relationship, he would have said 'Oh do you mind not - it's not helping, I'd rather be quiet' - and you'd say 'ok'. That's normal.

None of this is normal. You need go no further than the fact - FACT - that your DH didn't want you to check that your babies were ok alone with his mother who has seizures. If I'd posted before your update, I'd have picked up on that and said WTF.

Don't be distracted. You do not need to pick up on all these things and examine them, literally turning yourself inside out to find a way in which - aha! It's all me, he's really ok! - HE ISN'T, but he's working hard to manipulate you into thinking it. Because he doesn't want to be dumped and lose his nice cushy life where he gets to shit all over people and they still do his washing and feed him.

Disengage. Work on getting rid.

@Waveysnail

Is dh in counselling?

Yes, NHS and private.

Kidney stone are agony. They are the worst pain I have ever felt. This probably made him narky.... he therefore probably felt that you should have been more sympathetic and maybe it’s taken all this time to see your side of things. Maybe you both need to apologise and move past this. Please acknowledge the pain he went through too. Passing Kidney stones are notoriously like childbirth on the pain scale.

@LittleTiger007 I can promise you that I have not for even one second questioned how much pain he was in at the time. My attempts to distract him made him feel worse, and I feel bad about that. But my only question so far has been to wonder if it was appropriate for him to expect me to be calm and all chilled out about leaving my babies, not just for the first time but with somebody who is prone to having seizures. The only reason I pointed out my 'distraction techniques' was to make it clear that I wasn't moping around complaining to him that I didn't want to be there with him. I was focused on him, and also thinking about the babies. But he didn't want me to do the latter.

He sounds a bit needy tbh. I drove myself to hosptial with a broken foot, if it can be done then do it, don't drag others into the drama especially when there are babies at home. He is a grown man, why did you need to be there?

@VeganCow I wondered the same thing, but I figured I was being insensitive. He and I have very different approaches to what we require when we're unwell.

Maybe he was feeling anxious what with the pain and some men hate seeking medical attention as they feel embarrassed. Could that be it?

Don't let posters here excuse him.

Don't go back into denial.

His actions were not okay and are not okay.

When you say he went on at you for months about this, what was it specifically he was going on about? I think that might help you clarify how you feel about it, and also remind you to focus on his overall behaviour here not a one-off argument when he was in pain.

Was he complaining that you trying to help wasn’t being helpful? (In which case it’s maybe understandable to be snappy at the time when he was in pain, but ridiculous to continue to go on about it for months)

Or was he complaining that you weren’t focused enough on him/were worrying about the babies instead of him? (In which case, still ridiculous, but what was it he wanted you to do exactly? It sounds from the way you describe it that both of you sort of agreed your job was to centre him and his feelings and his pain and devote yourself to comforting and distracting him out of it, and you just disagreed about the best way to do that. I don’t think that’s how most people would see their partner’s role.)

@VeganCow possibly yes, although he's been no stranger to the NHS this year. I honestly have no qualms about him being grumpy while we were waiting. It was the following weeks/months where he repeatedly told me that I was being selfish and was too busy worrying about the babies for no reason when he was the one in pain. Last night, he apologised for saying that to me, unprompted; as in I didn't bring it up. It surprised me and made me wonder if it was natural for me to be worried about DTs at that age in that situation. The general consensus seems to be that the babies were fine to stay with MIL and I should have been more focused on him and less on them.

@GoldenOmber cross post. For months he was reminding me that I was worrying about the babies when all of my attention should have been on him. I don't think I would have been that anxious if it were my DM minding them, but MIL's condition and they types of medication she takes made me feel very uncomfortable.

But the consensus is based on an otherwise loving and supportive relationship.

Not one where your husband is an arse generally and behaves the way he does.

No idea about the rest of it, but if I was in pain, in A&E, and my OH was trying to get me to play games, complained I was grumpy, and kept trying to get me to check with the babysitter instead of doing it himself, I would be royally pissed off with him, and I would not be apologising for it.

You shouldn't have left the kids with an sitter you couldn't trust, would have made more sense to send MIL with her son instead, but you did, that was your choice.

Seems a bit foolish to be dwelling on this now. Someone in acute pain, waiting in hospital is bound to be worrying and in a hospital mindset, and you were doubly worried about him and your twins at home, so nobody would be thinking in a clear normal way at that time.

For months he was reminding me that I was worrying about the babies when all of my attention should have been on him.

Why the hell should all of your attention have been on him? You’d got him to hospital. You were there with him. You were even trying to soothe/distract/comfort him. (You’ll note that all the people picking up on this as a problem are saying that he might have found it annoying - not one is saying “you should have done more to soothe him OP!”, because most people in pain don’t demand that our partners sit at our feet going “oh no are you okay?” on repeat, that isn’t a normal or a reasonable expectation.)

And he is complaining that some of your attention was on your babies rather than him?

I’ve been in A&E before in pain. It’s horrible and scary. But I would never EVER have complained that my husband was thinking about the DC as well as me and it should just have been me, never, ever. Who does that?

Does he often seem to be jealous of attention you give to your children?

For months he was reminding me that I was worrying about the babies when all of my attention should have been on him.

Selfish twat. They were little babies who were being watched by someone who wasn't reliable for a number of reasons.

"It surprised me and made me wonder if it was natural for me to be worried about DTs at that age in that situation. The general consensus seems to be that the babies were fine to stay with MIL and I should have been more focused on him and less on them."

The "general consensus" is completely meaningless because you missed important information out of your first post; I'm not even talking about the whole back story and the bigger picture of abuse - I mean the fact that he berated you about it for months afterwards; the fact he was annoyed with you for wanting to contact MIL at all (and not because you wanted to contact her repeatedly), etc.

Even ignoring the back story, the bigger picture and the extra details about this specific incident, it was completely natural and normal for you to be anxious about leaving your baby twins with MIL in that situation.

His insistence that you focus on him at the expense of your (and his) children is part of his abuse. Normal, non-abusive men don't do that.

I strongly recommend that you do the Freedom Programme.

In the nicest possible way OP, is this helpful? If posters start agreeing with you is this going to start off again?

For what it's worth , I think you were the one in the wrong.

I don't really get the point of the thread, given your update. If your husband is financially, emotionally and psychologically abusive, how does it benefit you to be picking apart the rights and wrongs of something that happened in 2018?! Maybe he's being manipulative by apologising now, or maybe he had a rare moment of remorse. Who knows? What difference does it make? If he's abusive, LTB regardless.

@RB68

I don't think you did anything wrong at all, he was grumpy as ill, but he was also rude saying you had a face like a slapped arse - you were worried abut him and the twins. You tried being cheery and did your best. He did owe you an apology. A yr is a bit late, but he at least has. I would accept it and just say you were only trying your best in difficult circumstances and he was ill so its all best just treated as done and dusted now.

Does no-one ever read beyond the first post?

Why are you rehashing this op? Im bewildered. Just let it go!

You need to leave him. It's not surprising that he picked on you that night and for months afterwards, abusive men often ramp it up after you have a baby and now he senses you pulling away, he's hoping a belated apology will soften you.

@Greydove28

Why are you rehashing this op? Im bewildered. Just let it go!

Maybe if you read the thread you wouldn't be so bewildered?