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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Feeling more like a PA than a partner

4 replies

Confusedfirsttimemama · 08/08/2022 22:38

DP and I are trying to move house and struggling to get a mortgage lender for various reasons (good credit, good incomes but it’s a unique type of mortgage). I have been dealing with the broker from the start, I found her and have sorted everything up until this point. Anyway, I’ve been dealing with the entire process to try and get this mortgage sorted. DP has had zero input so far. DD is 6 months, we work together and subsequently I also carried on working when DS was born and I’ve now returned to the office (with DS) too. My plate is pretty full.

Tonight, DP emailed the mortgage advisor and started the email with “Apologies for the lack of contact, I have left things for (me) to look after as I have been tied up with work.” Later on in the email DP said “I” when he’s supposedly talking on behalf of us. I know it was an accident but it just added to the blow.

I tried to explain that I feel like it’s a bit belittling and I’m not ok with how DP has worded it. I feel more like a PA and DP is not treating me as an equal, as if I was good enough to do it whilst he was too busy with work but it’s ok now. He’s also confessed to not treating me like an equal and more of an employee in a therapy session. When I raised this, he told me that it’s the way I’ve chosen to read the email and I’ve got a chip on my shoulder so big he doesn’t know how I walk around.

This isn’t a one off. On Friday, he was making a point of ignoring me but making a fuss of DD and our dog before work but claimed he wasn’t ignoring me. Then before he left, told me it’s because they’re not nasty to him but the evening prior, we’d had a lovely time but he woke up that morning and wasn’t talking to me? We all have our faults but I am most definitely not nasty. We had multiple conversations about this and I got him to google “is silent treatment” and the drop downs are that silent treatment is a form of emotional abuse. His answer was that he won’t stay with someone who thinks he’s an abuser, I can stay in the house and he will move out. He doesn’t mean this at all, it’s hot air. This isn’t what I was saying but I try so hard to get him to understand that sometimes words and actions hurt and I’m not crazy.

I can be quite up and down, have suffered with depression in the past. 10 days ago, I told him I think I have PPD and he hasn’t asked me how I am since. I did bring this up this evening and he was sorry but how can he go 10 days without even wondering if I’m actually ok just because I put on a brave face and try to be upbeat and positive.

Sorry it’s been a lot of rambling, I’ve never done a MN post before and I know it might seem quite one sided. I’m quite a deep thinker whereas DP isn’t at all. He’s a wonderful dad and most of the time a wonderful partner too. We have a wonderful life and want for nothing. I can’t help but think I’ll never be treated as an equal.

AIBU? Am I hormonal and just need to get a grip?

OP posts:
phishy · 08/08/2022 22:47

He’s not a wonderful partner, OP. Good partners don’t give their partners silent treatment. Good dads don’t ignore their partners in front of their kids.

So he’s not even good let alone wonderful. You’ve not said a single good thing about him.

NoSquirrels · 08/08/2022 22:47

He sounds like he gaslights you, belittles you and never thinks of you as a person.

You describe him as wonderful though, and your life as wanting for nothing. It sounds like cognitive dissonance to me.

OriginalUsername2 · 08/08/2022 22:54

I described mine as a wonderful husband and dad too. Seems like that is red flag in itself, I’m noticing a lot of threads start of with those sentences then the posters ask her to look deeper and she realises he’s not that great after all.

pastypirate · 08/08/2022 23:09

Well thank goodness a man has arrived to sort out the mortgage!

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