My husband has been working a lot lately and not taking days off often enough and I have mentioned it a couple of times just as our toddler seemed to be missing him and I'm having a bit of a difficult time at the moment and would like him around a bit more.
He took a day off today for the first time in a couple of weeks and our toddler was very excited about it. We were all in the living room and he was excitedly asking if they can do some play doh together, my husband says yes and they go sit at the table in the kitchen and I leave them to it for it a bit, I kept hearing my toddler ask for colour pots to be opened, then repeating himself, again and again, I start hearing him saying daddy a lot, I leave it for about 5 minutes so not exactly seconds and he's still repeating himself and starting to get upset so I go in. The box of play doh is in front of them, none of them opened, a pile in front of our son that he had clearly been trying and failing to open himself and my husband was just sat engrossed in his work phone sending emails. He didn't hear me when I spoke and then sort of turned around and acted like he'd be participating the whole time.
I said look, you haven't had a day off in a while, can we try and just switch off for one day and be engaged with our son? He said I am engaged thanks very much love. I said ok, well maybe if we could try and be more engaged in him and not your work phone. My husband sort of like grit his teeth and started snarling at me saying don't try and use our son as a weapon against me. I said I'm not at all, but he wants to play with you and you were ignoring him. He misses you. That's all I've said. He went off on one then about how I don't understand the pressure he's under, I'm constantly on his case, I need to respect his job.
I did lose my temper a bit then and said to him I'm having a hard time at the moment and you know that, our son misses you, you can put your work phone down for one hour, give him some attention and give me some time to rest. You don't have to send emails on your first day off in 2+ weeks. He said I know I don't have to, I want to. I said that's really sad to be honest, and insulting to me and our son. He then started saying to go away and leave him and his son to have fun, they are trying to play and I was stood there lecturing them. It was just a really nasty tone he said it and toddler sort of joined in saying yes mummy go away stop talking, which really made me feel like crap to be honest, I told him it's not kind to speak to mummy like that, but when he's hearing his dad do it then he will won't he. His dad said nothing about this exchange which again didn't seem fair.
This was this morning and I've been really hurt all day since. The gritted teeth snarling just seemed so, angry and not something he's done to me before. It went from 'don't use our son as a weapon against me' to 'go away leave me and my son alone' well isn't that him using our son as a weapon against me? I just wanted him to put his phone down and play. Somehow I've ended up being the one in the wrong. It felt like he even turned our son against me a bit, with the two of them telling me to go away like that. I do admit I'm having some personal struggles at the moment so I might be being overly sensitive and maybe he's just stressed at work but I've gone in the spare room and said I don't want to speak to him for now.
I guess I'm just wondering if I'm over reacting or if it was all really nasty? Sorry it ended up quite long post but I wanted to get it out and I don't want to talk to anyone really about it, it's awkward when it's with your husband isn't it, you don't want people you lnoq to know your problems I guess.