To not wait with my wife for her message?

[Cnthnfne]

I’ll keep this brief: I (38M) was shopping with my wife (36F) and children (DS9 & DD7). After we had done most of our shopping, DW wanted to get a massage at a massage stall.

As we joined the queue, I asked DD is she wanted to wait in the queue with DW or if she wanted to visit a few shops with me & DS.
She said she’d wait with DW and I went off to another shop with DS.

After 5 mins, DW phoned me and said she wanted to go home: after 5 mins of waiting DD became bored and starter complaining about the wait and DW left the queue.

When I got back to them, DW was raging, annoyed at me for not staying and waiting with her. I offered to wait in line for her whilst she shopped but DW just walked off, towards the car park.

the journey back was in complete silence. She has been felling unwell lately, and perhaps I should have been more thoughtful but I feel her walking off and then it not talking to me is an overreaction.
we had some days book off this week but I fear they will be wasted as she’ll be in a foul mood.

To be fair, MN is full of people posting afte a squabble. It seems like the problem is OP being male. If I posted that DP was raging at me after a non-event and giving me the silent treatment after he wanted a massage on a whim, I'd probably rightly get my arse handed to me if I then asked the best place to book him a massage as a treat, and told to stop pandering to his behaviour.

Is this a wind up? I'd be telling the stroppy twat to go and fuck herself.

I think she is wrong. Family shopping day isn’t the right time to stop for a massage, unless she actually asked you to take the kids away for a bit. But, if she has been feeling unwell lately and is clearly stressed and you’ve both got a few days booked off, then I would book her a massage for this afternoon or tomorrow as a little gift and give it to her. A proper massage and a couple
hours of peace might help her feel better.

I've never seen these massage chairs in shopping malls unless they are part and parcel of having a pedicure.

Could it have been that op

@Iwasafool imagine this scenario instead.

Wife asks to go to the massage thingy. They all go in the queue (odd ,but hey ho) . While she is distracted (checking her phone, looking for change first the chair whatever), her husband does the whole "do you want to come with me or go with mummy" thing and just leaves with the other kid. She realises not only is he not waiting with her (why else would he queue up with her and the kids) but also left the 7 yo behind. Her mistake was assuming her husband would use his brain and do the common sense thing.

OP does not mention one single thing she did or said between asking for the massage and the phone call. Not even her asking that they queue up with her, just that they did.Unless we are to expect she just sat there like a lemon watching it all happen with no acknowledgment or protest, what's more likely? It also explains her anger at him not waiting. There was a presumption he would if he queued up and then simply disappearing.

@MegMarchHare why? This is a site primarily for parents or do we have to discount anything dads say or think now as well 🙄🙄

I disagree, and there have been threads about this so I won't rehash them. Lots of us disagree. The thought of a man coming to a site called Mumsnet, full of women, to moan about a small spat with his wife, is a massive ick and I'll leave it there. If you can't see that, then I can't make you see it.

No, people doing massages on those shiatsu massage chairs is really common in shopping centres. They don’t come with a pedicure. I used to work in Waterstones and we have a lady come in every weekend doing shiatsu massage. No pedicure involved.

No thanks, I'll go on what I've read, imagining things is pretty pointless. I could just as well say she is so controlling and abusive that the OP is totally undermined by her. Spending the rest of their time off/school holidays with her giving him the silent treatment is abusive.

@Iwasafool tbf, you don't have to actually imagine it because it's right there in the OP.

As we joined the queue, I asked DD is she wanted to wait in the queue with DW or if she wanted to visit a few shops with me & DS.
She said she’d wait with DW and I went off to another shop with DS

Not one mention of what his wife said or did or of him informing her what's happening. Just asking his DD and leaving.

It's every other poster making stuff up and imagining things with the wife demanding this, agreeing to that, changing her mind etc.

This is exactly that though, complete speculation and a made up scenario with no basis of fact. There is absolutely zero evidence to suggest any of this happened like this at all. It’s just absolute fiction, and not very good quality fiction either. You were correct that we have no context of what was said so how can you plausibly claim otherwise? “Her mistake was assuming her husband would use his brain and do the common sense thing” what a load of misandrist nonsense. Her mistake was not effectively communicating with her husband an actual plan to organise something she wants to do properly as people of either sex normally do when you have children. There you go, fixed it for you. Poor planning with young children and off the cuff plans with long queues is an absolute recipe for disaster. Her anger is absolutely misplaced because she didn’t plan ahead or consider the fact her kids were probably overstimulated and tired from a days shopping. She doesn’t sound very considerate. We have no context as to which parent does what share of the childcare or how often either get downtime. Either way, you don’t get to rage and ignore people for your piss poor planning.

With respect, you’ve done exactly the same throughout the entire thread by the looks of it but towards him. People who live in glass houses and all that.

@ForestForever nope. Just using OP's words.

He said himself, as they were queuing up he asked the daughter , then left. The wife doesn't feature anywhere between her asking for the massage and the phone call.

I admit , I assumed she was distracted/not looking but saying she had a chance to protest, communicate or whatever else is also an assumption.

Then she should have expressed her wishes not expected him to be a mind reader and act like a child when a simple mistake was made. When DD started to get bored she should have called DH and asked could you come and get DD as she is getting bored. Not left the queue and then called.

Your projection is off the scale. Maybe you behave in an abusive manner at home

That whole monograph of a scenario you wrote wasn’t based on his words alone was it. You’ve written more in most of your posts than the OP has in the whole thread. You were adamant from the beginning until now that your invented scenario was gospel that he was a brain dead moron but then maliciously orchestrated a master plan to ruin her five minute massage by weaponised incompetence as well as being thoroughly unpleasant to him for no good reason other than because you could be. There’s no need for it and no context to suggest he just walked off and left his DD with her without saying anything to her. He’s come back on multiple times and not once uttered a bad word against her or dug her out for how she’s behaved towards him. In fact he’s taken all the shit people have flung at him and once again held his hands up that he could have dealt with it better but so could she. He even said that in his first post. That’s not the sign of a bad man. Now all of a sudden after I highlighted to you that you’ve decided to take an issue with other posters for making stuff up even though you’ve done exactly the same, you admit this may now not be the case. The point remains if it was pre planned and much better organised even by half an hour then all of this could have been avoided. Regardless, I will always stand by my statement that raging at your partner in front of your children and using the silent treatment as a form of punishment which the OP said he suspects she will for days is wrong and no one will ever convince me otherwise. He knows his wife better than anybody on here and anyone else’s made up speculations.

Organising? If saying no I don't think it is a good idea, you take her, is organising no wonder people on here are always moaning about having to organise things and life admin. To most people that's just a simple statement.

Impossible to tell from this snapshot but it is the dynamic in some parenting relationships where one fun, nice, parent suggests all the fun, nice, impractical stuff and choices, leaving the other one to take the roll of chips pisser. Maybe that doesn’t happen here and the OPs wife is a sulky, attention hogging, abusive, cow but we don’t know and she may be in the half of parents in this sort of dynamic to be not really enjoying it. It’s nearly always the parent who does the bulk of the parenting who ends up pissing on their kids chips because the parent who stands back more bounces in with some fun choice, which makes it worse. Every single one of my friends who was a chips pisser to their primary aged kids was a single mother to their secondary aged kids (and they were all the mums, never the dads). Ime women really value men using their common sense and initiative and not having to be “told” everything in a “simple statement”.

"Do you want to stay with mummy or come with me" is totally designed to engineer a situation. If my OH asks the question he knows what he's doing 🤣

You’ve already posted almost exactly the same thing twice, are you not quite getting enough attention? ⭐️ here you go.

Show me where I posted it before 🤣

“If my OH (male) goes into a sulk over something small I'm bright enough to realise it’s usually the result of something else. I figure out what and then decide if I think the sulk is justified or not. I'm pretty sure if OP digs deep he'll realise why his wife is so annoyed. Male/female is irrelevant. We've had a snapshot of the story from one perspective so it's impossible to judge who's being unreasonable. What happened during the rest of the shopping trip? What happened in the days/weeks leading up to the shopping trip?”

You’ve shortened it a fair bit but the sentiment is still the same. Constant victim blaming, get a life.

Totally different point in this one but OK!
I'll go get a life 🤣

Excessive moodiness and making it last for days hideous

If this us a one off I'd buy her a massage voucher for a nice experience and forget about it

If this is how she behaves normally I'd be rethink if I wanted to stay married to such a fun sponge

Why are you on an online forum?

Everyone is entitled to express themselves and share their viewpoint. We never got both sides of the story, most of the incidents we discuss are relatively petty because that’s the stuff of real life and everybody who posts could be told to bugger off and speak to the people involved IRL.