Holiday with parents

[Lastdayblues]

Currently on holiday with DS (1), DP, DM and DF.

for context, parents have paid for holiday and (almost) all expenses. Haven’t asked for anything in return and don’t guilt trip, “we just want you to enjoy!” Is the answer if I ever bring it up. We live close to them and see them most days, which DP hates, he is extremely jealous (by his own admission) and thinks his DS won’t love him as much because his grandparents are around. I have some sympathy that it probably is a lot but not sure what else to do as we rely on my DM for childcare (we can’t afford nursery) and DF is working hard renovating for us on the weekend. We don’t (usually) see them the two days I have off from work whilst on my phased return from maternity.

Anyway, we are now on holiday, staying in our own apartment but near to my DP. Every morning DS wakes up around 6:30, he has his bottle we play, have breakfast, get ready and go for a walk for his morning nap. We get back, have lunch and down by the pool at around 2 where we see my DP and we all play in the pool together. We get back to the apartment for 3 for his nap, play, get ready for the night. We meet my parents at 6:30 at the restaurant until about 8:30 when it’s back for bedtime.

DP is angry that he “doesn’t get a minute” with his son, that it’s “not normal” and “fucking weird” for grandparents to spend that much time with him. He points out dad’s playing with their son in the pool as evidence of how wrong it is that DS has his grandparents with him.

we are now on our last day of the holiday and sat in the room because we’ve argued and DP refuses to go anywhere, he says he regrets ever having our son because he didn’t realise his life would be this bad. He’s called me names and says how much he hates me and our life because my parents ruin it.

Your husband is a pathetic, insecure jerk. He is essentially trying to get you to choose between him & your parents. Ditch him! Sounds like you have wonderful parents who would support you if you dumped this man child.

Gosh that's over the top jealous. Your DP needs counselling at the very least. Grandparents are a natural part of a child's life.
Good luck.

You all sound weird.

Your parents and you have got it all sewn up.

DC is looked after from dawn to dusk to all through the night and in any emergency.

Your routines and patterms all flow around you and your parents convenience.

They paid for the holiday - so what is there to complain about?

Your husband is completely hen-pecked.

What influence does he have on any decisions - oops, no one thought he should have any?

Other than being a sperm donator, how important is he in the family? If he died tomorrow, would anyone miss him?

How do you all celebrate Father's day? Do any of you feel there's something to celebrate? Or is it just grandpa you celebrate?

If he has to face another 10 years of this and be belittled by how important your son's nap times are, and how great your parents are, I'd honestly hope he finds a more fulfilling life where he feels a sense of value - above what you allocate him.

What a silly post.

DC is indeed looked after “from dawn till dusk” and “all night” AND “in an emergency” - he’s a baby

our routines and patterns all flow around baby’s needs.

Our DCs nap time are important because he’s a baby!!

“If he dies tomorrow would anyone miss him” - I have clearly stated multiple times how much time we spend together and complimented him and us as a unit. My post is about 3 hours a day on holiday that my parents are also there. He is there 24 when he and I both care for our child equally and want him to nap when he is tired. My partner would also agree that your post is ridiculous.

you could have made your point without jumping to ridiculous conclusions and losing all integrity.

@Lastdayblues
I think your partner is being very unreasonable. As someone who's parents help out like yours, my husband is very grateful for their help as am I for his parents help. I think your DP obviously doesn't understand your relationship with your parents and you grandparents, and you guys must be brought up very differently which is obviously a problem.

But what I would like to ask is have you spoken to him about this properly? What does he suggest? If he doesn't want them so involved is he gonna pay for childcare?

If your DP doesn't want the in-laws around so much he needs to find a way to pay for or do without renovations, childcare and holidays. That would be way way too much in-laws for me, but then I wouldn't be getting free work and holidays off mine. He's taking the piss getting all this free and then complaining that it means your parents are around a lot.

eta: if we were on a holiday the in-laws paid for Id be expecting to spend time with them a lot more than 3 hours a day.

He sounds fragile and selfish. Your son isn't an object to own or pass around, does the grandparents loving attention make him ashamed because he is lacking, so he lashes out instead of improving himself? Pathetic. Unattractive.

Does he actually bring anything to the table in terms of being beneficial for you both? Anyone who sees loving relationships and gets offended rather than being pleased your son is lucky enough to have a circle of caring adults, is a weird guy in my opinion.

Also if he's lost his parents or doesn't get on with them, he shouldn't punish you lot for that. A normal decent person would get therapy to move through those feelings. Honestly he sounds like an entitled weirdo for wanting to be the centre of attention, instead of building a secure attachment to your son. Is he planning on guilt tripping the boy when he gets friends? When he goes out with other people? If heaven forbid, his son out-earns him as an adult or builds his own life?

Hate it when people have to work around the toxic fragilities of subpar men..

Red flag! He sounds petulant and childish. With very low self esteem. Like a child in fact. You parents sound lovely. He is making you chose. I would ditch him to be honest. He’s going to make you choose. You shouldn’t have to.

I think your partner's insecurity about his son loving your parents more than him are the root of his issues. Is he jealous of your close relationship with your parents because he didn't/ doesn't have the same.
I think you said earlier he had been no contact with them for a long time. Does he feel unloved, pushed away by his parents & in some way his relationship with his son will see him pushed out? Perhaps he needs to be honest with himself & understand a child is capable of loving more than one person & he will always be dad & not to let his insecurities affect his son's relationship with his grandparents.
You both need to discuss honestly the arrangements for childcare & renovations if he's not happy with the current set up & what exactly is upsetting him. Is it jealously about his son, feels he can't provide, feels replaced by your parents. He needs to speak up.

Your husband is weird! He is jealous of the time your parents are spending with your child, why not go down to the pool earlier and he can take your child into the pool for a bit on his own? He is ok with their help when it suits him in the form of free childcare, holidays, and renovations!

He would piss me off and I would be telling him to grow up!

This might be one of the most bizarre posts I've read on here!

Grandparents are weird for providing free childcare, offering to pay for a holiday and doing free renovations? And not saying anything when OP's partner has convinced her that she should only see them when there's a reason?

If my PILs did all that, I'd be so grateful and make sure they knew how appreciative we both were. Not limiting contact to whatever benefits I could take from them.

Also to say, my PILs are lovely and would do all that if we needed.

As a woman who has found the sheer amount of time spent with in-laws suffocating and undermining, I would tread carefully here. He’s raising a big red flag (I’m sure he could’ve been more measured, but some of this stuff cuts deep) and I would heed his warning that all is not well in your nuclear family and warrants serious attention.

We went to couples counselling in the end and I remember the therapists words well, “Prioritise each other’s happiness over your parents, otherwise you won’t last the distance together.” We’ve now set up some boundaries and things are sooo much better though we’re financially worse off. Good luck with it all!

Sounds to me like your partner needs to give his head a wobble and grow up!
I don’t think you’ve spent much time with your parents at all… you get up eat and then walk together while child naps… have lunch and spend only an hour by the pool with your parents before child has another nap. Then meet up for dinner for a short time before child sleeps again…. Reading between the lines and from personal experience (my own and friends) I would say the real issue is that the holidays we used to have together before having your son have changed because you are both parents, and no doubt the holidays before more romantic, fun or adventurous, and now they are all centred around childhood naps and their needs for routine… He sounds resentful that your time is now divided between your son and your parents and him whereas before I bet he had most of your time, and you only saw your parents occasionally?!? he hates sharing you @Lastdayblues with anyone, including his own son! As sad, as that is, I think a lot of men feel it!… there was absolutely no reason from what I see that he couldn’t have got in the pool with his son after the hour we were down there in the afternoon?
when my ex and I split, he said, we never spent any time together anymore without DC, and I pointed out that he does shift work, and we got plenty of time together while DC was at school on his days off… he said we never got time in the evenings together, because DC goes to bed late, again I pointed out that he only sits on his iPad in the evenings anyway as well as monopolising the TV for the stuff he watches that me and DC didn’t like, so we tended to make her own entertainment and play cards or read together et cetera of which he never joined in… he then came out with some crap about how me and C are so close. He doesn’t get a look in with either of us…. Well I am sorry but she gets out of your children. What do you put in!!…. My ex and your DP sound very much like they want to put in minimum effort, but still expect the same in return as other more proactive dads enjoy! After my husband and I separated, I took my DC on holiday, and DC started saying things like “ why didn’t daddy ever do that with me?” (When watching other dads with their kids).. call my XH has been gone now for two years, only seen DC once in all that time for one day and DC don’t miss him and I’m not bothered about him coming to see them. It’s sad but it is what it is!call my XH has been gone now for two years, only seen DC once in all that time for one day and DC don’t miss him and I’m not bothered about him coming to see them. It’s sad but it is what it is.!
Your DP sounds ungrateful and controlling…. Be careful! Your dad is doing work on your house and adding value to it, if DP leaves he will demand half its value .. draw up a contract that says your dad is owed x amount for his labour, which at least means if you split the equity in the house is less and DP can’t just stitch you up!
I bet though that if you do something just the three of you on his next days off, somewhere like soft play, I’ll give him plenty of opportunity to bond and spend one-to-one time with his son, I bet without prompting from you he doesn’t bother, orders for a very short time, then loses interest and his board… or he’ll refuse to go somewhere like that at all, and instead want to do something he likes for himself and simply expects you and DS to target home and expect you to just be happy to spend time with him doing what he wants to do!!
Goodluck .. I think you need it!

I'd have probably arranged something that was just the three of you - "to give you a bit of a rest/time to yourselves" etc. Your parents seem to be permanent Childcare and would probably love a bit of time to themselves. You could have gone to a park or an aquarium etc with your Partner and DS. Or he could have gone with DS and you enjoyed the time with your parents. My DPs were lovely people but my DH couldn't truly relax around them. Seeing them everyday of a holiday would've meant he couldn't relax and enjoy it.

But are they actually forced to? The grandparents sound reasonable. Nothing stopping the OP, her DH and child going out for the day and having time and dinner by themselves

Sorry OP but I'm on your partner's side here. Yes he's being a dick about it but honestly I couldn't live a life where my in-laws were so involved in every area of it. I'd go absolutely nuts. Id genuinely rather not go on holiday than go away with them considering you see them 3 days a week and at the weekends as well. However nice they are that is unbelievably involved and suffocating.
My in-laws were like this with my sister in law and her ex. They would be round every day, even letting themselves in with their own key. Note SIL is now divorced. Why do you think that might be? And they're not bad people btw, I actually really like them. But part of that is because they live 100 miles away so I don't see them all the time (thank god!)

This isn't as complex as you think OP. Your DP has two choices, he is an autonomous adult after all. If he is feeling that other people's behaviour is impacting on him to the extent that he has to make a free holiday unpleasant and he needs to be in verbal altercations with you, then he could remove that negativity from his life and break up with you. Then he can forge his own relationship with his son, without having to be in any contact with your DP, and co parent with yourself whilst you both maintain your own needs and boundaries.

The other choice is that he accepts that you are close to your parents and they want to support and facilitate an easy life for their daughter and her family, and he accepts this means they will be in his life. They will always be in yours and your DS's life and he can accept it and take it as a necessary condition of being a partner to you.

I was you at one point in my life, the emotional piggy in the middle, and I ultimately made the decision that I was never going to resolve this. My exH was coercively controlling and violent in the end - his jealousy over everything and anything ultimately made him angry enough to break my bones so I left. Adults need to make hard life decisions. Appeasement, frustration and jealousy just ferments otherwise and that is so damaging to your DS who will come to feel this tension between the 4 people who are there to protect him.

There are actually a few different things going on here, looking at your follow-up posts.

1. Your husband thinks you spend too much time with your parents. This, I think, is pretty reasonable. You keep saying 'But it's just a couple of hours by the pool and then dinner on holiday' but the point is that you also see your parents most days when you're not on holiday. There are very days in your DP's life when he just gets to chill with his partner and child without your parents being involved at some point. DP and I have twice been on holidays with my parents (well, sort of - my parents were staying in an apartment for two weeks and we went out to stay with them for five days) and we had a really nice time. We had breakfast with my parents, went out during the day on our own, and then had dinner with them in the evenings. DP often says what happy memories he has of those trips. But my parents live 200 miles away. I suspect he would not have enjoyed those trips anywhere near as much if we saw my parents every day at home as well! A holiday, generally, should feel like a change from the norm. So I can see why your DP gets a bit irritated.
2. Your husband thinks your baby son will somehow love him less because of your parents' involvement. This is irrational and weird and he needs to get over it. That in itself is a separate issue from the enmeshed relationship you have with your parents and the fact that he was more amenable to spending time with your parents before your son was born suggests that fatherhood has messed with his mental health and awakened all sorts of issues from his own childhood (the fact that he was NC with his own parents for a long time clearly isn't a coincidence and has probably made him paranoid about his own relationship with his son). He needs to think that through and possibly get some therapy.
3. Your parents are paying for your holidays. Clearly, that adds an extra dynamic here. It's lovely and generous of them, but it does mean that your DP probably feels a bit like he doesn't have the freedom to do what he wants with you and DS every day. You need to consider whether your parents' generosity is also curtailing your freedom as a family of three. To your DP, it must feel a lot like your parents are the heads of the family. That didn't really matter before you two had children of your own, but the dynamic has changed a lot now - your DP probably feels like the independent family unit he imagined just isn't there because of your parents' involvement in everything you do.
4. You keep saying how lovely your parents are. I'm sure they are lovely, kind people, fab grandparents and would be mortified if they knew DP felt they were overstepping. But how nice they are is really not the issue here. The issue isn't quality, it's quantity. You can have too much of a good thing.
5. When you and your DP argued, he 'called you names' and said he wished you'd never had your son. That isn't acceptable. It's perfectly OK for him to have issues with the amount of time you're spending with your parents and I think you need to be a lot more understanding of that, rather than just dismissing it by saying 'But it's only a few hours by the pool, that's not excessive'. However, he shouldn't be shouting at you or calling you names, that's not OK. It doesn't invalidate his argument or feelings, but it is not OK for him to express them in an abusive way.

So your DH is happy with a free holiday, free childcare & free home renovations but isn't happy spending time with those providing all that for him & his family? Yes it sounds like GP spend a lot of time with your DS but there's plenty of time your DH could be spending with him just him & little one. What's he doing between 6.30am to 2pm when you're not with DP? It's special times like bath time & bedtime when he can have his bonding sessions with his Son. If he's playing with him whilst GP are there then this is special time for them & times your DS will remember too. It sounds like your DH is jealous of the close bond your parents have with their Grandchild. He needs to grow up & appreciate them more. If he hates you that much & regrets having your Son then tell him to Fxxk off & find a better life without you both in it, I bet he can't.

"Goodtogossip · Today 13:08

So your DH is happy with a free holiday, free childcare & free home renovations"

What makes you think he is happy with any of this?

OP has said he's never said he wants any of the free stuff to stop.

In fact, he said he wants her Dad to come round and do free renovations, but that he should ignore his grandson when he does it so the partner doesn't get jealous.

How are things now you are back OP?

I guess long term you need to be a bit more careful about just saying “yes” to your parents that puts DP in the position of being the bad guy who stops you/DC from having the nice things they are offering, or having to accept a level of involvement from his PIL he doesn’t like.

It does all sound a little smothering for a SIL but it’s pretty simple to carve out some time and surely you don’t want to be with your parents all the time either?! Go early to the pool or for a walk, tell your parents you’ll see them at lunch. They probably would appreciate a short break from you all too but are perhaps just trying to be helpful. You didn’t have to go on holiday of course either and they are generously paying and helping you both out a lot. It doesn’t sound very sustainable though - what if they got ill or decided they don’t want to provide so much childcare at some point?

What's stopping your dp taking his son out? He's got the whole day up until 2.00. He sounds vile-calling you names and saying he hates you.

I don’t know if I’m reading this right, but it looks like you spend 3 hours a day together with your parents, which really is not long when in holiday together, sounds like he has bigger issues to me. I would welcome your DS having a great relationship with supportive parents.