To hate that he locks the door when we're home

[LotteryFights]

Our front door is always locked as it goes straight onto the road & we never use it. Instead we use the backdoor was goes out to the garden and then through the garden gate onto a side road where the car is parked.

H is highly anxious. For example every single morning without fail he messages me saying 'drop off ok?' (I drop the kids off before I go to work) and i have to write 'yes' or he'll call me and i'll be in meetings and he calls and calls.

When he leaves the house at the weekend and me and DC (primary school) are home, we are in the back room/snug thing which is where the back door is and he will leave by this door and then use his key to lock the back door from the outside. Of course I'm not locked in as I can just unlock it but it's so weird to me. We are home, watching telly or playing and he is outside locking us in. If I wanted to lock the back door while we were at home - i could do it.

And then when he comes back and it's unlocked as i've popped into garden - he will ask why it's unlocked. He's not angry but he's geniunely expecting a response - and I find myself explaining myself to him like a kid!

He think I'm the weird one and he's keeping us safe. I makes me uncomfortable - which he says is my issue.

AIBU to feel hate it?

Well I'm retired and live on my own? Can't see myself fighting off intruders, really!

The Christmas tree one is weird. Anyone wanting to burgle will know that there are presents in the house, regardless of whether they’re under the tree or not. Same with the drop off. Surely you’d message if there was an issue.

I keep doors locked if I’m not downstairs after someone walking in and stealing the car keys and the car once.

I just couldn't and wouldn't live like that. He is putting his issues on you and your dc, if it's not addressed they will also suffer from anxiety. If you have a garden which is secure I see absolutely no reason to lock the back door while you are in the house and not in bed asleep. Having to lock and unlock a door every time I go into the garden would drive me batty. I've lived in a housing estate for a few years and never behaved that way, mostly have lived in the country and to be honest have often forgotten to lock the doors at night. I don't know how it should be addressed but it seems like a sad way to live.

My sister had someone in the kitchen of their house, had nipped over the back wall and in through the UNLOCKED back door, took some things and may have been in the front room where she was asleep in the chair and hubbie in bed.

Lesson learned...LOCK IT bad guys are always trying for open doors whether house or car

Double glazed doors don't lock automatically. You have to push the handle up to shoot the bolts across and then lock with the key. My external doors are both double glazed so have to be physically locked.

(not in UK) most doors here are Yale-type locks, so closed means you can't just open it from outside.

All insurance policies I've ever had insist that you lock the door if there is nobody in the house, and some have specified you have to turn the key twice. Not actually sure why, and it's something I've always done anyway.

When at my mum's she likes to keep the front door locked, with the key in it (which means nobody can open it with a key from outside in case of emergency) and the back door locked, but the key hanging up which at least means someone could open it with a key from outside in an emergency. Assuming we were able, we's be able to exit the front door in an emergency. Unless that is where the problem is.

In OPs case I'd offer a compromise: lock the door but there will be no messaging of normal drop offs. And no scolding me like a child about anything ever.

I would say YABU. But that would be because I had a home invasion, in the middle of the day while I was at home with young dc.

We live in a nice quiet area. I never used to lock the door.

When the police explained how often a home invasion is a crime of opprtunity during the day, mine happened to be the one unlocked, I started locking them even when we are home.

Ds still has nightmares about it sometimes, he genuinely thought the 'bad men' were going to really hurt me (thankfully it was 'just' a slap and robbery).

This is one of those highly contextual things. It will depend on where you live now, and sometimes on where you have lived, when you formed the habit.

In a high crime, high risk area, absolutely, door locked at all times, whether anyone is in or not. In a large town or city in the UK, with an average crime rate, lock up when you leave, but not when at home, unless there are specific risk factors which require more caution. In a tiny village in a low risk area, maybe you don't lock up at all.

If your DH is out of sync with what's reasonable for your area, then maybe ask him to work out what's going on. It's not okay for him to lock you in if that's not what you want.

Where I used to live, I only ever locked my front door when I was leaving the area entirely overnight i.e. leaving the country! Even then, I only locked the inner front door; the outer was always open so the postie could leave parcels in the porch and those who knew could find the spare key.

The door thing alone wouldn’t bother but when combined with the other things you mentioned I would find it stifling and I wouldn’t like it.

We use our side door mainly and I have always been relaxed about it being locked when I am near by until a couple of years ago two men let themselves in, luckily they just had the wrong house and we’re expecting to find their fellow tradesperson there instead of me but it made me rethink.

We use the windows on the back of the house downstairs. There is only one front window and I can barely reach it anyway. I’m short 🤣

I lock the door behind me . I have been in the back garden three times today , each time locked the door behind me .. my back door is in the lounge.

I think it is the combined anxiety that this feels like the final straw for you .

You need to sit down have a conversation at a none stressed time .

I would make it clear do not call me at work unless it’s an emergency .

if there are any issues on drop off I will text you otherwise assume it has gone smoothly .

tell him you will no longer be responding to texts about drop offs .

The back door maybe say I will make more effort however I won’t be spoken to like a child .

he may also need help with his anxiety .

but also think does he have reasons for some of it . Has he been burgled. Have you had problems on school run ?

We live rurally in Northern Scotland. We lock the doors if we go out and at bedtime but not when in the house during day.

It surely depends where you live?

You are being unreasonable.

I prefer my doors locked. Dh doesn’t mind and I asked him to ensure they are always locked too, so that I can feel safe in home. As a woman, there’s too many statistics of rapes and murders that take place within one’s own home.

when I asked dh to lock it, he just does. He accepts my request and supports me rather than making it a big deal

Front and back doors always locked here

Wait, so you live in a quiet village @LotteryFights ?

In that case I don't even understate front door issue, let alone the back door.

Maybe your mistake was calling it a back door and not a garden door. As of course in the warmer months you don't close and lock your garden door.

not really, I had some of these convos from your husbands perspective and thought I was maybe being silly and then we got robbed because the back door unlocked!

Walked in took a laptop and walked out. Came back for round two and we spotted him then.

similarly a relative of mine had someone with mental health issues just walk straight into her house , sit down and refused to leave as she claimed to live there.

Why wouldn’t you just be cautious and keep your kids safe?

I always lock my doors, my front door annoyingly doesn’t automatically lock once I’m in so anyone can walk in from the street and it’s happened when I had a man and a woman posting pizza menu’s open my door and walk into my hall so that door always gets locked. My kitchen doors are always locked if we’re in the house. All doors get checked before I go to bed as my husband is slack at checking. If my husband leaves the house and doesn’t lock the door I feel annoyed, if I am alone in the house and take a shower or bath I check my front/back doors are locked.

I can kind of see where he's coming from (my grandma had her bag snatched in broad daylight from her house when someone just walked in and took it) but in practice I don't lock our door during the day if I'm in. I lock it if I'm doing something like bathing DD alone and I wouldn't hear someone over the bath running. Once I put her to bed I always lock the door.

I did have a conversation with my DP about contacting me first thing in the morning. He is at work and I do drop off. I said "assume that no news is good news. I will ring you if there is a problem - you don't need to check in when I'v got a million and one things to be doing in a morning". We usually have a catch up later on in the day now and leave it at that, and it works better!

YANBU. Just because he’s anxious doesn’t mean you have to pander to his worries. It won’t decrease his anxiety, but merely feed into it. I’d refuse to text him every morning if it was me.

I have to remember to check & lock all the doors before going out for the day as we have 6 lots of doors to the outside downstairs, although we tend to only use 3 of them regularly.

Apart from that, we never lock the doors. We live down a long drive between 2 fields which is the only way in or out to the road. If we’re indoors, the dogs will bark if there’s anyone’s outside.

I would find that weird. The only reason I lock the back door when I'm in is because it blows open in the wind. Keeping the front door locked makes sense but doors only accessible through the garden is way OTT. It's like everyone expects a home invasion at any moment. They're so rare it's like not walking along a row of shops in case a sign falls on your head.

I live in la la land - often leave the door unlocked and am fairly lax on security. I have had things stolen from outside of my front door - a lantern and stupidly, an inflatable canoe that I did not put away.

I think that if you are in the room, you do not need to lock the back door.

However, I think that you and your husband should probably speak about how you manage this interaction.

You don't think that you need to lock the door, so you don't and you feel infantilised by the constant reminders to do so - which you wilfully ignore.

He 'does not feel safe' if he thinks the door is unlocked and needs to have confirmation that the school drop off has gone OK.

If you were to lock the door, how would this make you feel? How do you think it would make your children feel? How will it make your husband feel? If you don't lock the door - how will it make your husband feel?

If you were to say - I think we will feel safe if the front door is locked and the gate is locked. If I leave the house or go upstairs, I will lock the back door - will that meet your needs? How do you think the conversation will go?

Can you have the 'drop off discussion'? Are you happy to confirm every day - that drop off went fine? Do you think he is sitting there waiting for your message, in a state of anxiety? Is it anxiety or control?

Are there other areas of your life / areas of his life - where you see this level of anxiety / need to be in control / fear? Do you know if there is a reason behind it? Has there been something that makes him feel unsafe? If you were to reassure him on some of these things, would that be enough? Would that make you feel locked in and controlled? Do you think talking to someone about his need to be in control / feel safe would help? What about your feelings of being locked in?

My take on this, from the outside... is that you feel that you can make an adult assessment of what is required to make you and the children safe and that this is not in line with what your husband thinks.... I think your approach is right - being in a constant state of thinking you are not safe, increases the levels of cortisol in the body and is harmful to our mental and physical health. Reducing the levels of stress being experienced by you and your husband is important and you are also modelling behaviour to your children. Again - I think your husband is likely to be exhibiting heightened levels of fear and not feeling safe, that are not warranted by the situation and that this is not healthy for anyone. I could be wrong and I see on there that lost of people feel that locking doors when you are in the room is the right thing to do... so maybe my levels of feeling safe are off.

We put a turn lock on inside of the door. Dh can lock it but easy enough to unlock or lock as needed

I think that the solution should be to get a lock put on the garden gate with that spiky stuff on top of the gate and the fence for security.

Then keep that back door unlocked while you're there.

That's what we do. I'd be so pissed off if my other half kept locking the gate.

Also your DH needs to sort out his anxiety. I'd stop with the morning reassurance. It does sound like OCD and reassuring all of the time makes it worse, not better.

Sorry, meant to say I'd be so pissed off if my other half kept locking me in the house.

We always lock the door when we’re in and we live in a quiet cu-de-sac. You just never know who might decide to wander in and nick your stuff. If it’s that easy to get out I genuinely don’t see what your problem is.