Who should have got up?

[Autieangel]

Dh and I went to bed around 945 last night. I couldn't sleep and at about 1030 I heard a loud bang in the house. Like a crashing noise. We have 4 year old ds in his bedroom and a dog downstairs.

I woke dh who said it was probably nothing. I thought one of us should check in case it was to do with our son.

Dh refused so I checked the house alone and concluded our son had put toys on his bed and must have kicked some off.

I was annoyed that dh left it to me and essentially went back to sleep while I walked round the house alone.

Who's unreasonable here?

I don't think it was a stupid thing to wake him up for if you thought it was an intruder or other emergency.

If there was a loud crash and my child was in a separate room, I wouldn't have even stopped to think about intruders.
I'd have been out of bed and into my child's room like a shot to check they were okay.
I would rather risk an intruder hurting me, than getting to my child.

That said I'm a single parent, so there is no-one else to do it.

I'm kind of torn on it to be honest and it really just depends on both of your personalities as to who would/ 'should' check. I certainly don't think it should cause disagreements though!

With me and DH it would be either of us - neither of us are 'tougher' or 'better equipped' to deal with an intruder. And we don't keep a baseball bat under our bed :S

If one of us was very strong / generally more brave/ courageous or whatever, then yeah, it would probably make more sense for that person to check if there was a genuine worry about an intruder and they were happy to.

But I certainly wouldn't be having any kind of argument/ disagreement with my partner about whose 'turn' it is (and how often does this happen anyway??)

I wouldn't be happy if my partner ignored me and went back to sleep if I was genuinely scared. But I think there's also a bit of catastrophising going on here and maybe a bit of tit for tat/ pettiness about 'turn taking'.

How do marriages remain going when people are so so petty

Never used to occur to me to wake up my dh when I was married if I thought it was the kids falling out of bed or the cat knocking something off I automatically just got up to check. If I heard noises downstairs that I couldn't place I would have probably woke him up and we would have investigated together after making sure the kids were safe.

Looks like I am in the minority here but I would have woken up husband also if it was so loud to wake me up and we both would have gone to check! This has happened previously and it has been nothing but it wouldn’t have occurred for my husband to go back to sleep! We have also had the ring bell go in the early hours and the husband jumped up to chase the intruder down.

imagine the outrage on here if she had come face to face with a burglar and had been attacked. The mumsnetters would be calling for his head for sending her in to danger!

I have been in this situation, and I did wake my ex. We didn’t have children then, but we did have cats. No intruders

My ex and I both got up (but he went first). I was truly worried we had intruders, and people get burgled all the time. So it’s not a risk to be taken lightly.

We had only recently moved into a rundown cottage in a rural area. The previous owners had used it as their holiday retreat once, but now it was mostly left empty but furnished. We knew they had decided to sell because the house had been broken into a while before.

Some people have the mentality ‘it will never happen to me’ but sadly it does.
Other people are worriers and know there are risks.

I am risk adverse and can get anxious over things. I mitigate this by being prepared, and I don’t consider it abnormal.

So for instance, I keep a rope under the bed (in case of fire) so I can shimmy out of my upstairs windows.

After the above incident I started keeping a baseball bat under the bed as well.
Now technology can be used to deter burglars or warn you.

I now live alone but still in a rural area. I’m much older but feel less worried about intruders now.

I think you have every right to get your husband up so you can investigate together. But now this has happened it may be time to get a ring doorbell/intruder alarm to give you peace of mind.

imagine the outrage on here if she had come face to face with a burglar and had been attacked. The mumsnetters would be calling for his head for sending her in to danger!

Yeah but that didn't happen. You could come up with any number of scenarios that didn't happen and imagine how people might have reacted. What if it had been the postcode lottery people doing a cackhanded presentation of their massive cheque and the OP would have wanted to hide the money from her husband because he's got a massive gambling problem she didn't tell us about? If that had happened she'd have been glad she went downstairs.

What didn't happen isn't relevant.

I think there are differences in upbringing, experience and culture too. Growing up, it would definitely have been my DF and DBs who would have checked if there was an intruder. But we grew up in a 'rough' area. So the house being broken into wasn't a hypothetical and getting beaten up or jumped wasn't a 'thought exercise on the internet'.

You don’t need to a source or statistics to understand that a man confronting another man is going to cause more issues than a woman.

How often on nights out do men start fights with other men vs starting fights with women.

Most intruders don’t attack unless they feel threatened or that’s what they came to do.
As a PP said most break ins happen during the day because they don’t want to risk a confrontation.

Your dog didn't start barking, that tells you that it's not an intruder.
Unless you have a dog who thinks Billy Burglar is his new best friend.

🤣🤣

Makes no sense. How are you going to help your child if you're knocked unconscious first?

You do need statistics when you're advising sending women into a situation where they are more at risk than men. If you're confronting someone during the night then they are not the type of burglars who chose to break in when the house was empty.
It's not the same as men fighting in the street. Especially since a significant proportion of home burglaries are committed by people known to the victims. The risk is completely different from drunk men on nights outs getting into fights with each other.

I would react on impulse, and do my best to avoid that happening.
I don't know without going over every possible scenario.
I am just saying what I would do in impulse. I wouldn't even stop to think.

I'm not saying my response is the right one either. It probably isn't. (I have got plenty of things wrong in the past that I have sadly lived to regret).
I'm just saying what would be instinct.

I'd have woken my husband up. He wouldn't mind. Nor would I mind if he woke me.

Seems a fairly normal response to be honest.

Glad I don't live with someone who would be 'furious' with me for waking them.

I've also been burgled while my whole family and I were asleep upstairs. They took everything possible from downstairs, took the car keys and used our car, which was in our garage, as their getaway car with all our stuff in it. So it really does happen.

I am a feminist and although I haven't attacked the OP I don't understand her viewpoint or yours frankly. I would have gone to investigate myself as I have done loads of times over the years. If I had heard someone breaking in, then obviously I would have woken DH and, as I stated upthread, if she had said to her DP that she thought someone was in the house I am certain he would have got up immediately. She didn't, she heard a noise and must have had an idea that it wasn't coming from downstairs and her dog wasn't barking. It's a bit of a nonevent and now OP is annoyed that her sleeping husband didn't do what she asked even though he was right - it was nothing. I wish I was cossetted, I don't hate women - very much the opposite, I don't hover I often post (I should probably hover a lot more than I do!) and can very much imagine a man up to no good and how scary that is. I don't think the majority of posters are being particularly aggressive to the OP. You'll always get one or two on any MN thread even if it's about something benign! I think it is a fairly common scenario that a lot of posters have been in and dealt with by themselves. A minor incident of a toy falling off a bed which OP went to investigate and probably then went back to bed and sleep.

He didn’t hear the noise therefore he didn’t think it was a big deal. You heard a noise that woke you up, it came from your child’s room so you went and checked. Everything was fine. YABU for making this into an issue when it isn’t.

Ah okay I understand you. It's so interesting. My impulse, having been burgled, is to assume it's happening again and wake my husband to protect us whilst I take the children into the bathroom and call for help. Thankfully has been false alarms!

If i thought it was my child i would have shot out of bed like a rocket, i would have had no need to wake my DH but if i thought it was an intruder i would have sent him as he is a big scary mountain with a great left hook.

What kind of dog ?

So he has a tin box (like a old fashioned biscuit tin) that he keeps small toys in. That was on the floor spilled open so I assume it got kicked off the bed . Didn't wake ds tho.

I didn't want to go alone as my dh is twice my size and works out in the gym 4 times a week so is much better equipt to deal with an intruder than me. My preferred choice would have been to go together.

Damn right, OP. Ignore the arseholes who tell you otherwise.

My H when I lived with him was a whimp. I'd have had a better chance of scaring off intruders. He would have been more likely to start crying and offering to show them where the good china was

If I genuinely believed there were intruders in the house I would call the police and gather everyone in the kid's room. I wouldn't risk confronting them. Stuff is stuff. It can be replaced. Even when H was in the midst of alcoholism and depression and I completely loathed him he would have been more important to me than stuff.

If I was only worried about a noise and believed the possibility of intruders was minor I would have crept down with the dog and my phone with the intention of sneaking back upstairs to call the police.

I live alone now with my DDs but big dog sleeps downstairs. Intruders tend to be men. Due to the lockdown and being a house full of women, men are a novelty to my dog. The only men he knows well are H and DDs ex who have taught him that men play wrestle on the floor. He gets stupidly excited when men come to the house. Uncontrollably so, because it does not happen often enough to proof his training.

He is stupidly friendly. I am under no illusion that he would chase away any intruders but he's big, very bouncy and part Beagle so has a strange obsession with having hands and arms in his mouth.

If anyone entered who didn't know him all they would see is a massive black beast running full pelt at them with its mouth full of teeth open. I think that would be enough to make any intruder reconsider

There's nothing wrong with wanting a man who has that protective instinct.

Equality to me doesn't mean that in a relationship we can't have different roles, strengths and weaknesses.
.
I like a man to be manly.