I’m 47, my partner of 15 years and dad to my two children (13m and 6f) is 50. He’s always liked a drink, as have I, but recently I feel like his drinking is becoming an issue. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m not wanting to drink as much now I’m older and I’m invariably up with our daughter the next day or if I’m being unreasonable. Anyway, yesterday we went out for a few drinks and to watch my partner’s friend play in his band. The children were happy enough watching the band and then later when they got a bit bored of that they were playing games on my phone. They had some food from the buffet but then were making noises that they wanted to go home. By this point we’d been out for nearly 4 hours. I’d pretty much had enough drinking by this point too and so said to my partner I’d walk the kids home and he could come home a bit later. He was a bit upset and said they could just wait and that he was only going to have one more drink. He basically said that we should all wait until he was ready to go. I didn’t want to cause an argument so we stayed about another hour and then left when he’d finished his drink. By this point the band was finished too. The thing is, I think the kids had already been there long enough and were obviously bored but he thinks that they shouldn’t get to go home just when they’re ready. That he would have been made to wait when he was younger and that by taking them home would be pandering to them.
He does a similar thing when on holiday too. We will go out on an evening and he will want to have ‘a few drinks’ before we eat as he doesn’t like drinking after a meal. ‘A few drinks’ is until 9/9.30 though, longer if we let him, and even then he will complain if we wanted to eat sooner. Even if the children were saying they were hungry, he’d get them snacks rather than going to get a meal until he’s ready.
Back to last night, we got back in the house and it’s up to me to get our daughter in the bath, get her into bed and then sort our son’s tea out. All the while he’s sitting there watching the football and carrying on drinking. Whenever I bring his drinking up he gets very defensive and angry about it and makes out I’m making it an issue when it’s not. Even just writing this down I know it’s massively pointing to problem drinking. He works shifts so he doesn’t drink every night but when he does have a drink he usually does to excess and I’m left doing the bed time routine and getting up in the mornings with our daughter. Right now he’s asleep on the sofa as I had to take the car into the garage this morning and had to wake him up to give me a lift back. I’m always left taking care of the kids when he can sit on the sofa watching the tv or on his phone. Sorry, this turned into a bit of a rant really!
AIBU asking him to take the kids home as they were bored?