To want to tell acquaintance to piss off?

[burgledinParis]

I was at a dinner party with friends and friends of friends yesterday. We were going round the table and all talking about something small we did in 2022 that changed our lives.

A good friend and I both said that we'd gotten tumble driers and that it had been life changing.
Both of us - mid thirties - work very long hours - out of the door round 8 in the morning - often not back in till 9-10pm. Both single, no children. Live in Paris with high mortgages or rent, small spaces, far from perfect sound proofing - which means no putting the washing machine on late so the spin cycle doesn't wake neighbors. For both of us pre tumble drier this meant doing all the washing on weekends and then living in our small apartments with our washing drying taking up half our sitting rooms. Also - you can only do one load at a time and have to wait for it to dry before doing another load. We both basically said that the tumble drier was game changing as it meant we could set our machines to do the washing during the day and pop in tumble drier in the evening thus freeing up weekend time that used to be dedicated to washing and half our sitting rooms.

Acquaintance who lives in a massive inherited apartment and has five children and a wife who doesn't work went on and on and on about how we were ecological sinners, lazy, that the carbon footprint of our tumble driers was poisoning his children and that if that was one of our highpoint of 2022 we were both basically lazy, unorganized, boring fuckers. He was so vehemently agressive about the whole thing and wouldn't let it go. I think his poor wife probably does all the washing .... She wasn't at the dinner party she was looking after the children ...

Not wanting to ruin a lovely dinner party for our hosts I just smiled and gritted my teeth and grinned and made jokes the fact I that I would compost my left overs ... good friend tumble drier owner two had pretty much the same reaction.

Would I be unreasonable the next time I bump into him to tell him that my tumble drier has less of a carbon footprint than any one of his five children, or that I only ever fly for work and get the train for my private holidays where as he talks about multiple shortfall holidays a year, and then tell him he can fuck off if he brings up tumble drier again?

YANBU OP! I think I'd have to say something next time too.

We had some fireworks a couple of years ago (I know - sorry - MN hates them!) and the next day one of our neighbours came round to moan about them, which would be understandable to some extent, but the main crux of his argument was that they weren't good for the environment.

I mean, I'm sure they're not great for the environment, but I suspect his 3l diesel BMW X5 SUV that he drove around in every day is worse!

Unfortunately it didn't dawn on me what car he drove while he was moaning!

@Duckingella I wasn't clear I think - He works but his wife doesn't.

He explained in his apology letter that his wife has bad PND and has barely gotten out of bed since the baby was born last spring. It was his first evening out since the birth of the baby and he only made it out because his mum finally came to see them. His mum arrived to help from abroad the day of the dinner party and had a go at him because of the state of their apartment.

He thought we all knew as he'd spoken to other friends about the situation- we didn't. We all sort of thought that he was probably getting divorced because he hasn't been answering anything when being asked about his wife and she's not been answering calls or texts (He's historically linked to our friend group - she was many years ago a "plus one") - we thought she was detaching from us.

He's apparantly spent the last year doing all the schools runs, all the shopping, cooking and cleaning and washing as well as all of the childcare. He swore he hadn't taken any drugs but that he'd starting drinking before coming to the dinner ( I still doubt this though... am convinced he was on coke). He said he was very sorry but that it was just too much for him to hear about our "carefree" lives at the moment. He wrote about how sorry he was for shouting at us all and said it made him realize they need help.

And so I'm very inclined to accept his apology. I reached out to another friend who knows his wife who confirmed that she's in a very bad way but is refusing to get help.

Another closer friend of his is going to go round this weekend and take the kids out with him and try to see if his wife will accept having a cleaning lady in for a while.

I feel a bit guilty for judging him so fast.

Stop justifying yourself (especially to twats).

Agree about dryer's being life changing. I wouldn't be without mine especially for towels and bedding.

He said all that in his apology note?!? Talk about over sharing. I think he needs a therapist. His poor wife.

So would I. I pointed this out to someone who was having their third DC and preaching about reusable nappies - and getting into a very fuel inefficient huge car. I asked him how environmentally responsible he thought his car and larger family were.

I don't think I would be arsed about getting out of bed either if my husband was as verbose and deranged as this fella.

On the wider subject, I absolutely hate the whole finger pointy 'carbon footprint comparison ' conversation. It's become almost like the new morality and it's tedious. Throw one's energy into challenging corporations and governments rather than arguing the toss about whether a child is more of an environmental hazard than a tumble dryer.

It’s in the OP! Why do people not read the OP!