Passive aggressive or justifiably annoyed?

[StolenChanel]

Backstory is DH works shifts. He’s forever changing jobs or career paths with a big plan involved but always changes to another awkwardly patterned shift work job. We had DD when we were very young and made a plan that, as the more “studious” one, I would finish college / uni full time and he would work and study part time, and then when I was finished and in the career we had planned for, he would go back to college to finish his. He never did and has floated about in all of these shift roles ever since. I don’t complain aloud as I’m grateful that he stepped back all those years ago so I could continue with my education, but his shift patterns make family life very difficult.

Anyway, we had planned to visit my mum for Christmas, about a 2 hour drive from us. Her house is nice and in a quiet area so it makes a change for us. It was his idea to come here. He has work tomorrow so we were always planning to leave on Boxing Day.

Weeks ago my mum had asked what time we would be heading off as we have family coming for lunch today. I asked him what time he wanted to get off by and he said 3, which I passed on to mum. He decided this morning that he wanted to leave by 1 and had never said anything about 3 (he did).

Family are late. He wants to leave. I asked can we at least wait until 2 so we can see them and have something to eat. The food is already laid out but Mum spent ages making it look nice for when everyone gets here, so I don’t really want to tell DH and the kids to just “tuck in” and ruin Mum’s presentation.

He’s muttering to himself and giving me dirty looks, but saying to me “Don’t worry about it, we’ll wait.” It sounds so small but I get really anxious when he gets like this because I know if the day now doesn’t go completely smoothly, any bumps or blips I’ll get the blame and he’ll go on saying something like “this is why we should have left when I said we should.”

I feel nauseous with anxiety now so I’ve sat in the garden on my own for a bit and now I feel guilty because my mum is also slightly on edge now. I just hate feeling like this.

YABU = I’m over-reacting - he’s understandably tired and wanted to get home,

YANBU = no, he knew the plans and is being unkind

Regarding his working pattern and its impact on family life, where these situations happen in a long standing relationship, I tend to think that you knew who he was when you met him and got together with him. He was less studious, less ambitious and happy enough to drop out of college. Yes, it was circumstantial due to your pregnancy, but a very ambitious man wouldn't have done so under any circumstances. He would have carried on studying regardless, forcing you to take the hit, or insisted on only using paid childcare. Or perhaps even walked away.

So to a certain extent, you have to accept that this is his path in life. Or leave. What isn't ok is to carry resentment, which I am sure he must be picking up on. Can you switch things around in your mind to have a more positive view of his shift work? Surely there are times when it has worked well for your family to have him around in the daytime or at odd hours?

However, on a separate note, there is something very tense about your post and I get a strong whiff of control from him.

@BadSkiingMum I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. You’re absolutely right about reframing my thinking and yes, there are many positives to his shift work; he’s often able to collect our youngest from school which I can never do. I need to work on letting go of the resentment.

As for the controlling behaviour, this is what I need to work out. Sometimes things can be really good and I don’t feel we have any issues at all, but then he goes through these strange waves every few months where he acts like this. He doesn’t seem to like it when my attention is on anyone outside of our household (friends, family members, he even rolls his eyes if I mention a colleague’s name when talking about my day at work). He never outwardly says anything negative, but is often full of sarcastic comments. For example I have one particular friend who I’ve been close with since we were kids, she visits me at home often and I even have her children to stay for days at a time, yet whenever I mention her name he says “who’s that?” It’s odd. I have a cousin who I used to be really close to, but we fell out a few years back (another story). She was completely in the wrong but I let bygones be bygones and we’ve reformed a relationship since then, but now whenever she calls for a catch up I ignore her calls if he’s home because he’ll make sarcastic comment and ask me questions or to do things every 30 seconds so we can’t have a proper conversation. I’ve resorted to only calling her on my way to or from work now because it’s just exhausting for both of us when I’m constantly like “hold on one second”.

But I still wonder if I’m just being dramatic and overthinking things. I have always been an over-thinker so could be reading into things too much. I can never tell whether I’m doing that or not.

Glad to help. In some ways I can see the other side of the coin because my own DH is the polar opposite: highly driven, ambitious and successful. Definitely an alpha male and that comes with its own downsides! Yet would I have been attracted to someone who was low-key, relaxed and happy-go-lucky? Probably not.

Sounds just like my ex. Hated going out anywhere. With me, without me, and hated me going. We missed weddings. Funerals. Parties. He hated going out, whereas I loved socialising. We would get invited as a couple 99.99% he would moan all week, if he was coming, then not go/moan the entire time and make it blatantly obvious he did not want to to be there. It got to the point where I gave up lying and making excuses for him, and would go on my own or with our kids but not him. He'd be ringing and texting within an hour of me leaving "how long do you think you'll be?". YANBU.
Leave him. He sounds selfish, boring and completely devoid of passion.