Husband going away

[Anonymous20003000]

Okay i want to start by saying we have been married 15 years and have 2 kids. We both work full time. Mu husband is a hard worker and provides and we also go on holidays etc.
I will admit i share everything with my husband however he is the opposite he naturally doesnt really talk about his feelings.

anyway i had our son 2 years ago and we were both over joyed however because i went on maternity leave my husband had more time to go and see his friends meaning he wasnt restricted with my work schedule. This then increased to two three times a week of eating out with them. They were all in a group chat etc phone calls often and msgs etc. anyway at one point they all realised it was a bit much and they should all focus on their families. So this reduced to meeting once a week. Anyway one evening my husband said he and his friends were going to go europe for 3/4 days in half term. I assumed he was joking or they were just planning and i laughed and said er ok but yeah u do that u wont have a hone to come to jokingly as im left with 2 kids over half term. However i secretly planned a getaway for us . Anyway the next day i just mention oh yeh are u guys messaging? Trip discussion? He goes oh yeh were booked for morroco for 7 days and ive paid for the hotel and flights. I said what?!!? You didnt think to mention that to me?! I then asked did his friends do the same thing he said well one hasnt told his wife yet and might just tell her day before.

im actually very upset i wouldnt physically stop him going but surely i deserved to be told something like this?? What do you all think?

Tell him you’ve booked tickets too, so the whole family can join him in Morocco. Tell him if he doesn’t want you to come along too, he should have told you.

You wont have a home to come back to - isn’t that a strong no? It is incredibly selfish. Get yourself a break with your friends booked and start going out more. Maybe when he’s the one holding the baby he might see how inconvenient it is. I think 2-3 nights at most when you’ve got a family at home.

If he can get his money back or not doesn't matter, he needs to cancel this trip..... he has a family and responsibilities he cannot abandon and he didn't tell you because he is hoping to bully you into agreeing by saying it's non refundable!! (Wouldn't suprise me if he did manage to get some sort of refund tbh)
He is being a selfish jerk!!!

Yes he is emotionally abusing you and the specific technique is using DARVO: deny , attack, reverse victim and offender. It is an abuser’s tool.

D) I told you.
A) You should have objected.
RV) now i will be shamed in front of my friends.
Im the real victim here.

Just be direct: when you prioritize your friends you are neglecting me, our relationship, and your children. You are making me live like a single parent over half term—a precious week you should be spending with me and your children. How do you plan to pay us back for this time? How will you mend the relationship you are breaking?

I think you need to very calmly tell him how deeply upsetting you find this and that if he goes away you don’t know if your marriage will survive.

If he tries the passive aggressive “well I’ll just cancel the whole thing!” bs again then calmly reply “only you can make that decision”

If my DH just announced that he'd booked a week away with 'friends' (and without me), with no real discussion beforehand and no way of getting the money back, I'd be considering telling him not to bother coming back home. That's simply not acceptable.

Actually, I'd be angry if a man thought it was okay to suggest leaving me to deal with our kids on my own over a school break, never mind him just announcing it as a done deal.

He's a selfish jerk, and he'd be very sorry he'd done this, because it would mark the end of his carefree days of meeting up with his friends multiple times a week, as and when he pleases. Time for drastic changes, because this isn't the behaviour of a man who respects his wife.

Honestly, I don't know how you have not hit the roof. It's awful. I don't even know if there is a way to come back from this.

Just FYI, my dad was in a group of friends like this. They were all friends for decades. Over time, it turned out some of the men were using the weekly meetings as a disguise to sleep around. Including weekends away etc. Their wives were told it's just the guys and since some of the guys in the group were nice, family men that the wives knew very well (like my dad), the wives accepted it. But the good guys (i) never went on any trips and (ii) they would only stay for 1-2 hours at the weekly meet ups rather than an all afternoon or evening thing.

OP You constantly say " but he helps out" or "he works hard to help" You make it sound like he is doing you a great favour. He is the father of your child, your husband not a random bloke. Do you think you should just be grateful that he throws you a few crumbs of help ? He shouldn't be helping out, it is not just your duty to raise your child or run the household, it is duty also. 50/50. Not helping out, DOING HIS BLOODY JOB AS A FATHER AND HUSBAND.

His friends sound like arseholes as, one is going to tell his wife the day before??
You sound financially secure, tell him not to come back and take your kids on your own trip.

I've just looked at your other thread OP.

You talk in that about your struggle to even have a baby. And your struggles with your health and job. It makes your DH's selfish behaviour even more abhorrent.

This is not how decent people treat each other. His friends are more important than you and your children, why would he not want to spend his week away with you and them? They are immature ridiculous babies that need to grow up and respect the women in their lives who they just use as facilitators. You deserve better.

I agree. You need to tell him:

I do not want you to go
I feel disrespectful that you organised and booked this without discussion
I am upset that you felt it was ok to leave your family at half term without discussion
If you go I will take the time to consider whether this relationship is serving me any more

Don't let him blackmail you. If he says "so you don't want me to go" yeah him that's correct, you do not want him to go.

Stand your ground or he will treat you like shit forever.

Although I would just divorce him for this, it's beyond unacceptable.

What?!? The respect he can't make the little wifey toe the line?

That is his problem not yours.

I just can't imaging dh using family money to book a weeks holiday in Morrocco without discussing it properly first. Depending on finances at the time, if we as a team could make it work I wouldn't have any problems with it in principle.

The lying and manipulation I would not be able to forgive, it would make me view him differently and really question how he views me and his family.

Are you sure he's always with his friends? This is a suspicious level of friend time for an adult man... are you sure it's not a woman and his friends are covering?

The fundamental issue here is that he doesn't see your marriage as an equal partnership. He isn't as invested as you are.

You both see him contributing to housework as him helping you.

You both see you as the primary carer of the children and him as someone who steps in when you arrange it.

You're taking the mental load and investing in your family while he sees family life as something he does that earns him a reward, i.e. time off with his friends.

How would he respond if you told him you had booked some time away alone and just assumed that he would be there to take care of the children and the family home?

You need to raise your expectations of him and start building some wellbeing into your life that isn't dependent on him wanting to spend time with you.

Seriously, OP, why are you being a wet lettuce over this? Why aren't you wearing his bollocks as earrings?

It's absolutely insane to think, as a parent, one can decide to swan off for autumn sunshine for an extended break. He does not have your agreement to do 192 hours of solo parenting. Especially not when one of those is a toddler. If you're like most teachers I know, you'll have a fair bit of work to do over half term as well.

F.O.A. the Op's slack-assed husband:
ABSOLUTELY NO WAY YOU ARE FUCKING OFF FOR AN ENTIRE WEEK AND LEAVING HER WITH THE CHILDREN WITHOUT PRIOR AGREEMENT

Maybe if you wrote it backwards on his forehead be could get the message.

None refundable? Well, what a crying shame. He's wasted his money.

Because - NEWS FLASH to DH - the money isn't the point.

Ffs 🙄

Oh no, can't have him losing the respect of his fwends!

Doesn't seem to give a fuck about losing your respect, though, does he? Never mind respecting you.

I'd be politely enquring how much respect he'd lose for having his wife divorce him.

Either he doesn't think you'd ever leave him and therefore takes you entirely, disrespectfully, for granted or he actually no longer cares about you and your marriage and doesn't care of you do leave him.

Whilst I realise that it is a waste of money, it is irrelevant that it’s non refundable. The money is gone, and will still be gone if he goes on the holiday, except that he will also spend more whilst away.
I would try to have a good time with the kids, but I don’t think I’d take them away. There should be a different name for holidays with young children as it’s not the relaxing recharge of batteries or doing just what you want that holidays without children can be.
It would be even worse if in future he uses this as an argument to go again. ‘You and the kids had a lovely time on holiday when I went away before’

He is blaming you? For not putting an end to a trip he didn’t talk about?!?

He is taking you more and more for granted.
Started in ML and is just carrying on.
You didn’t say anything then so he is expecting you to just swallow it now.

Id go on hols on my own with the dcs, as you had planned. No reason why you should have a hols.

And then you need a big discussion around respect. Incl always telling each other about plans that involves the other.
And you need to start taking time fir yourself - going to see your friends when you feel like it and expecting him to pick up looking after HIS dc (not just helping)

It looks as if all I would say here has been said! But I agree with PP who talked about DARVO and gaslighting. From the way your parrot his lines about working hard to provide, and helping, it sounds as if he is an arch manipulator who has worked hard on you to get you right where you are now. The guilting you when you call out his shitty behaviour is absolutely on the money for this type of man (sadly I have experience). If you can, even though you love him, please use this week to make arrangements to divorce him. Pack his stuff up and put it in the garage, ask his parents to collect a bag of necessities for him, and tell him to go to theirs when he arrives back in the UK. Get a solicitor. Maybe contact www.rightsofwomen.org.uk

good luck and I am so sorry this has happened to you x

Stick to what you said, he goes he doesn't have a home to come back to. He's a selfish prick.

I have to agree with others, he doesn’t love or respect you enough. I would go nuclear if my partner did this to me - I think I would break up if he didn’t change this. The lack of communication, the disrespect - you mentioned one friend said he is going to tell his wife the day before - that would kill me. He worries more about what his friends think of him (being a lovely toxic masculine man who doesn’t need to ask permission) than losing his wife. Perhaps as someone said there is someone in the wings or they are all sleeping around on these trips.

If women did this - left a man with kids without telling or asking - it would be called abandonment. If it was me I would go and book my own European break (Saturday morning to Monday) - ask him to watch the kids Saturday morning and then text him on Saturday to say “Bye I’m off on my holidays” no further details of when you are coming back and then turn off your phone until Monday - see what he does, I suspect he won’t get on that flight! I suspect he would also call it abandonment - cause only women are responsible for kids! Alternative route as someone suggested would be to book you and the kids to go to Morocco but to be honest I think I would lose it if I met his friends.