To be upset that my husband said he has 3 kids when he has 4?

[LaGauchiste]

I haven't spoke to my husband for 2 days He thinks I am being unfair, and making a big deal out of nothing. I keep thinking about it, and do not feel like I am being unfair at all.

Friday night, we went to the pub with his 2 new colleagues and their partners. We were just chatting, when one of the ladies asked him " So how many kids do you have?" He replied by saying that he had 3 sons. The woman proceeded to say " So all boys no girls?"
He laughed and said "yup".

At that point I wanted to cry and punch the table so badly. WE HAVE A DAUGHTER. My 20 yo daughter passed away in 2019. I am so angry and upset that he said that.

I confronted him at home , and he saw nothing wrong with it : " Well she's dead, we don't have 4 children anymore".

I grabbed my purse and went to my sister's house. Haven't talked to him since. He keeps messaging me telling me how much he loves me, that I need to get over my, OUR, daughter's death.

Aibu? I never want to see him again.

My parents are dead. I would never say I have parents. I would only ever speak about them in the past tense. Perhaps that is how he sees it?
Perhaps for the past 2 years he has always been talking about her in the past tense so it would never occur to include her when talking in the present tense?

You are being unreasonable and unfair. He probably didn't want to talk about it on a night out with peoplel that don't actually know him. It would bring the evening down and be awkward as well.

It doesn't mean he doesn't regard himself as having 4 children.

I would have done the same I think in that circumstance

It is very sad but i understand him. He was in the pub. He was not going to "go there" with that group over drinks in a pub.

I'm a widow so if somebody asked if I was married, I'd say no. He's not denying your daughter, he's just chatting to colleagues without having them asking about her.

I totally get you and no, you were not being unreasonable. My friend lost her little baby girl four years ago, she still writes her name on Christmas cards and so do I when I send the family a card, my friend told me it meant the world to her that we recognise that she still has a daughter even though she might not be here physically anymore, she still has a daughter.

I think your DH didn't mention your daughter in case the conversation turned more detailed. Perhaps he didn't want any sympathy or to feel sad, which is the way the discussion would have turned if more detail had been requested, ie, what do your children do for work?, etc.

I'm so sorry for your loss, and of course YANBU to be upset.

But I can see why he replied as he did. A night out at the pub with new colleagues wasn't the time or place to bring up a painful conversation.

I think he was insensitive in terms of how he dealt with it afterwards, telling you to get over it. And 2019 is still so recent, it must all be very fresh and raw still for you both.

When people ask me whether I have siblings, I say no, I'm an only child. I remember there was a time my mother used to get a bit upset about that, although I think she came to terms with it. Few people know that I had a sibling who died.

I don't think there is a right or wrong way to answer the question, it's just that you and your husband have very different ways of answering and on this occasion, they clashed.

I can see both perspectives, and I understand your perspectives op, all the best

The fact that he's had years to perfect his response to this question so it's not like he's a rabbit in the headlights.

Years, @Skeumorph?

Both parents are recently bereaved in the worst possible way. If you want to wade in with a post about how shit men are, there is no shortage of them.

This is a thread about how people process the death of their child, and there are no rights and wrongs to it.

@RandomLondoner, I can barely believe you wrote that.

Skeumorph I get what you mean but I think you're weaving a tale based on assumptions and getting worked up about it. OP seems understandably upset still about her loss but we don't know exactly what happened, how it happened, what was said and wasn't said, the tone and intent, etc besides what OP has told us. We don't know if he hugged her and tried to apologise but OP wasn't having it and was telling him how much he's forgotten their child. Then he too decided to throw it right back at the OP (See, we can weave different scenarios here).

So I won't join in alienating OP further from her dh by adding to an incomplete scenario.

You will always be the parents of four children. Even long after you are gone and nobody remembers you existed, you will still be your daughter's mother and father. You still have a daughter. The world just doesn't have her in it anymore. Your heart does.

And I would bet his does too. He sounds as if he's compartmentalised it and has made himself the father of only three boys so he doesn't have to remember or explain that his daughter is gone. So that he doesn't hurt like you do.

I'm very sorry that your daughter passed away. I hope I never know the pain you live with and I wish you both the peace and strength to live with your terrible loss.

I'm so sorry to hear of your loss and can 100% understand why you were so upset. As pp have mentioned, this might just be his way of 'dealing' with the tragedy - by compartmentalising that part of your lives together. A friend of mine lost her daughter in a tragic accident a few years ago and does not 'count' her in her brood numbers for that reason - it's her own way of processing what was the worst thing to ever happen to her and her family. Her husband, on the other hand, is very vocal about their daughter and finds her approach hard.

For what it's worth, I would react very similarly to you, I think. I hope you both reach a resolution soon.

I am so sorry to hear of the loss of your DD. 2019 is still very recent too.

For what it is worth, I don't believe that anyone ever truly gets over a loss of that type and telling them that they should have by now is crass insensitivity at it's worst. It is much more a case of you trying to learn to live with what has happened. Of course you are still a mother of four.

I can see why he may have said three in the pub, as he probably doesn't know these people well and may not have felt up to discussing whatever happened to your DD with them yet. It would have been better though if he had explained it as such to you afterwards, rather than the blunt insensitivity. Perhaps it would have been more acceptable if he had just said you had three sons? Still true, and the way is still open for him to acknowledge your DD to them at a later date when he knows them better and is more comfortable in their company.

You are not at all unreasonable though to pull him up on the shitty way he spoke to you. As someone else already said, telling a mother to get over the death of her child is unacceptable.

I am so sorry for your loss. When you describe wanting to punch the table, my heart hurts for you. But I think the anger you were/are feeling is probably misdirected.

I lost my dd 26yrs ago it might as well be yesterday, Xmas is agony every year as that was when we lost her

I also lost a son, I have one son now
It's hard when people ask you how many kids you have, it's a real conversation stopper if you explain your losses

But if my husband had told me I should be over it now, and had laughed at the insinuation of no girls, I seriously would not be held responsible for my actions
Insensitive doesn't even cover it.

I'm sorry for your loss lovely i wholehearted can empathise to what it is like
Communication needs to be left open I think, he needs to explain himself and his words. Ide also say that if that's how he actually really feels, then that would be it for me, I couldn't live with someone who thinks that.

Of course you're not being unreasonable. But neither is he. It's okay that he didn't want to discuss the loss of your daughter with those people. He should be more sensitive to you in the aftermath though.

I am so sorry for your loss.

I'm in the same position.

If I meet new people I will tell them I have one child if asked.
I have 2 children.
My dd was murdered 6 years ago. If it's brought up people get embarrassed and it causes an atmosphere.
With people I know, I'm more than happy to talk about DD1 and they know I have 2 children.
I still visit the cemetery 2/3 times a week. Dd1 is very much still part of our lives and will never be forgotten.

Op I'm so so sorry for the loss of your daughter

Good friends of mine lost their dd as an adult. It isn't something you ever get over, and until I read that dh said you should I was inclined to feel much more neutral in this.

Of course ynbu.
He isn't unreasonable either to find it a difficult question to answer, or to find it easier not to say anything when asked such a question. It's a minefield for many people and most ppl don't know what to say to bereaved parents or feel too uncomfortable to say anything. In a social setting, I can see how he might want to avoid that.

However, it's unacceptable to tell you to get over it and he needs to realise that. It also compounds his original reaction to the question about his children because anyone can see how it erases her from your family.

Can you agree between a way to acknowledge your dd in public and social settings that you both feel comfortable with?

Personally, I think a standard response of '4 children: 3 boys and 1 girl but she is no longer with us' is the best type of response in these situations but it's up to the bereaved as to what feels best for them.

@mumsie8
i'm sure she was a typical bright, breezy, caring, infuriating, much loved and now missed young woman.

Off the cuff meaningless platitudes are exactly the reason many people won't mention their lost child to strangers.

It’s one of those things where neither op or her husband is in the wrong. Apart from the silent treatment after.

People grieve differently.

He clearly internally and doesn’t want the world to know and to have people ask questions or feel weird or whatever.

Op clearly wants her daughters memory to be in the world and mentioned as part of love when asked questions.

It’s a difference of grieving that’s all his not an arsehole and she’s not crazy.

Honestly I feel like I’d probably god forbid not mention as that’s a lot of emotions to then deal with whenever the question is asked. Just the same as most people don’t know that I didn’t grow up to a certain age in care rather than with my parents. Close people do but not people I’ve just met.

I think you are both unreasonable, him for saying that you should get over it, and you for not allowing him to express himself as he wants and saying he is wrong. He is not wrong, and neither are you, you just have different perceptions of your family and how to talk about them. I'm really sorry you are upset, though.

I am sorry for your loss. It is however how he is coping and you have no more right to decide how he copes than he does you.

You were on an evening out, it wasn't the time or the place to discuss a loss of such a personal nature and as new colleagues it wouldn't have been right to put them in this position either.

I think the only acceptable way for the father here to express himself was in exactly the words that the OP wants used. And that just isn't right, he can use his own words and feel his own grief.

I think people just have different points of view on how they answer what seems like a pretty straightforward question.

I answer 7, my wife answers 8. Some of our kids answer 7, some of them say 8, some of them include her name when asked who their brothers and sisters are, some do not - we had a little girl who was stillborn 6 years ago.

I think there's probably a divide that some people think of the physical presence in their first instinct to answer the question, and others about the memory and emotional connection, I suspect more men will be the former and more women the latter (purely anecdotally from my own experiences) but essentially it's an individuals perspective about how they interpret the meaning of the question.

I suspect if your husband was asked a slightly different question on his deathbed or at some distant time in the future when he's old and frail - "how many children did you have?" - he'd say 4.

OP, i mean this very gently as, although i have not experienced the grief of losing a child, i know a few that have and have experienced losing 2 young people close to me ( my cousin and ex boyfriend, both by suicide). It is awful and life shattering and comes with a truck load of anger. I get it. You are hurt and furious, as well as having no control over the injustice that brought you here.

Your DH is clearly grieving differently from you and that is fucking difficult. Have you read Grief works by Julia Samuel? My girlfirend told me that it helped her make some sense of her loss and to recommemd it if i knew of people grieving.

I do hope your current wave of anguish passes soon and you work something out. It is shit and my heart goes out to you.