How to handle the little things

[hasitreallybeenthatlong]

How do you handle those "little disagreements" in relationships? My relationship with OH is rather strained to say the least. We have been working on it, however the last couple of weeks we have barely seen each other and it has been great as we actually missed each other, we both work from home so see almost too much of each other, it's been a nice break. However I was excited to go home and see him and DS, however, I found out he didn't pick DS up for nearly 2 hours after he finished work, for context I hate DS being in nursery so much so as soon as one of us finished we collect him, it's really annoyed me, his reasons were he was tidying the house, he has never tidied the house in the 4 years we have been together so why he started now, turns out he washed the dishes and hoovered the hallway. This has really annoyed me and put a real downer on me seeing him because I'm back to that irritated stage with him. How do you handle the little things and not like them ruin something? Trying to get out of this bad mood before I arrive home!

I don't think your partner did anything wrong. You don't get to dictate what he does with his time. Maybe he just needed a couple of hours to himself. I know I do!

But outside of that, if doesn't sound like it's working.

Passive aggressive nonsense. There was no need for him to do that. Was he showing you how 'good' he is around the house when you're not there? U

Maybe it was his effort, it's sadly just hit a nerve with me as he knows I feel strongly about our son being picked up, we have both agreed to this in the past.

Just need tips on how to not let this ruin a nice going home moment :(

For stuff like this you remind yourself that you aren't in charge and he gets a say when he picks up your DS. You can feel as strongly as you want, but he doesn't have to agree. The thing to ask yourself is if there was any harm done.

It’s sounds like you just think things should be done your way.
I finish early a day a week, sometimes I pick DD up from nursery and other times I enjoy an hour or two of free time. It would really annoy me if my DH tried to dictate what I do to that level.

Your child will have been fine.
Your OH did it differently today and that's fine too

How on earth is it passive aggressive to hoover your own hallway and have an hours downtime while your child is in nursery?

I see what you are saying! And that does help to put things in to perspective

How about you let it go? Maybe 'park' or compartmentalise it?

I see how it comes across like that and somethings I just have very strong feelings on, DS being left in nursery is one of those things for me.

Why are you sending your son to a nursery that you're not comfortable with?

Maybe use the couple of hours free to find an alternative that you do actually like.

To be honest, if your example is indicative of your ‘little disagreements’ you get over it by not being so controlling.

you are being entirely unreasonable with this pick up situation, if I were your OH I’d have checked out

Because he usually does fuck all in the house and he should've been picking his son up.

@pinkyredrose he did pick his child up

just when he wanted, not when the OP dictated it to be done.

I know he picked the kid up. The OP didn't dictate, they both agreed to not leave him longer then necessary.

And on this occasion he did something else with his time, and then collected his child as required

Its always baffling how some really twist themselves to paint a male partner as the problem on posts like these, when there is one clear unreasonable party.

You are being so unreasonable.

Unreasonable to you maybe but leaving our child in nursery longer than needed is unreasonable to me - each to their own, I never dictated we have an agreement.

You say you have an agreement but clearly your partner isn’t on the same page. Maybe he thinks the agreement was to pick them up from nursery ‘as soon as reasonably possible’. That might mean as soon as you close the laptop 9/10 times but the other 1/10 times it might mean throwing the hoover around first or getting another task done that can be annoying around a toddler, or popping to the shop for milk, or having a shower or a quick coffee and then going to the nursery.
You aren’t wrong to run right to the nursery the second you finish work but equally if he is within the nursery hours he isn’t unreasonable for not doing that every single day.
It doesn’t sound like he’s dropping the child off at nursery and heading to the pub all week, it was one day when he wanted an hour to himself!
You are being unreasonable for stewing on this while still in work and dramatically declaring the whole evening is ruined because of this!
Who knows why you both argue all the time and what can be done to reduce that, but if they other arguments are like this one then they could be solved from you letting go a bit and realising your partner is an equal parent and has some say over how he parents day to day.
He really hadn’t been unreasonable here.

I like to get my moneys worth at nursery and pick DC up as late as possible 😂 I'm half joking but seriously my kid gets a lot of benefit from being at nursery as I'm sure yours does so why let your 'mum guilt' (which we all suffer from to a degree) make you argue with your partner? Find a new nursery if it makes you so upset your DC being in nursery a couple of hours 'extra' - when most kids are habitually there until close to the end of the day?

This.

You may be happy to martyr yourself for your DC. Does not mean that your DH is wrong not to do the same.

If you have paid for the childcare anyway, why not have the break?

Is it the hill you are willing to let your relationship die on though?

Because it will die if you keep nit picking at these things that really don't matter in the grand scheme of things.

In your time you can choose to pick up as soon as possible

you don’t however get to dictate your partners time.

he obviously doesn’t agree with this ‘agreement’, I also don’t blame him for agreeing with you when it was raised, as I can’t imagine you’re the type of person who takes disagreement well from your post

Good luck when your DS has to start school.

I think you're mad. You're paying for nursery, leave him there the full hours?

Unless there's some backstory and he is very upset, unsettled etc!

Your poor DH. He deserves a break too.

It sounds like you need to learn to pick your battles. Maybe you need to find a way to pause when something irritates you so for example, ds has been longer at nursery today. Instead of immediately wanting to give off to dh pause. Take half an hour to yourself and say you're going for a shower/nap/ tidy the bedroom somewhere you can be more or less alone. Give yourself 30mins to take the time to think about is this actually something that warrants a row, is ds happy and content, is dh OK, is anyone hurt injured or sick, is this thing that happened today going to have a lasting impact on the wellbeing of your family moreso than having another row with dh will. It sounds like you've got into a cycle of being irritated, speaking your irritation, defensiveness on dh part and then a row ensuing so you need to break the cycle. I'm using your child being in nursery as it's the example you've given but it could also be the amount of cleaning he did or whatever the problem is. Hopefully this would give you a chance to pause, reflect and think about whether it's something worth fighting over or if you maybe are having a knee jerk reaction because you've been used to arguing.

I will on an aside say that as the other parent you also need to trust dh to make decisions and judgements on the welfare of your child as they are also his child and you're parenting together so if he feels ds is safe, happy and content and well looked after in nursery then you need to be able to respect him as your coparent unless there's another angle to it we're not understanding here. Otherwise you run the risk of constantly undermining him which will feed into the cycle of rows it sounds like you're having and make you feel like you take all responsibility which is actually possibly a choice you're making rather than something you really need to do.