To have ditched twat DH at the airport and gone on holiday without him?

[AskingForTacos]

I’m 32 and have never had a holiday abroad. It’s a combination of things really, growing up I had 2 disabled siblings and it wasn’t practical or financially possible to travel. Had a couple of caravan holidays in the rain but hated them as it unsettled my siblings and everybody was stressed.

Became a single mum at 21 (DD now 11), so once again couldn’t afford holidays. Met DH 4 years ago and we have a 2 year old DS. DH has been well-travelled over the years, but hasn’t had a holiday since meeting me as we’ve been saving up for general life expenses. The end of last year I have a bereavement and became quite sentimental, emotional about my children and general life experiences and sort of had a “grab life by the reins” moment and told DH I wanted to have a sunny family holiday together, and he agreed. We’re both a bit tight and I also don’t cope with overly hot weather (anything above 25 degrees is too much) so have chosen to go in March and set off early this morning. And before anybody asks yes I’m going to pay the fine from DD school.

Flight was with Ryanair. I had a checked bag for mine and the toddler’s stuff, DD had a 10kg carry on. Mine and DD’s bags were full but within guidelines. DH travels light so decided to just take a personal bag and filled it to the brim. He even ordered some sort of zip extension thing from Amazon to make it close more than it naturally should. I’m sure you can see where this is going.

Me, DD and the baby sail through the gate and he gets stopped. I asked, in fact, begged him to just pay the extra charge so we could be on our way, we could afford it. It could’ve just been chalked up a lesson learnt, but no, he had to be a dick about it. He was abusive to staff and called a girl who only looked about 20 a “jobsworth bitch”. At this point, he was told he would not be travelling (rightly so). He changed his tune then and tried to pay the fine but they weren’t having it. It was like an episode of Airline circa 1999. He then started an irritating speech about how it’s disgraceful etc etc and tried to get us all escorted out with him. I initially was going to go with him because I was stressed but DD was absolutely devastated as she’s been looking forward to the holiday for months. She started crying and I decided me and the kids would still go.

We arrived a few hours ago and are settled in our hotel but I’m on edge. I’ve spoken to him on the phone and he thinks I was a cow for leaving him. He’s coming out tomorrow on a different flight (from a different airport...) and I’m dreading it. On the phone he said we should’ve all gone out tomorrow together. It’s only a 7 night holiday and who knows when the next one will be so for me every second counts especially as we wanted a combination of excursions and chilling days in the resort. If we flew out tomorrow we'd only get 2 resort days not to mention paying for all new flights. He’s not physically abusive or anything like that, I’m not scared, I just can’t be arsed listening to the moaning. Was I wrong to go without him?

’I think I have mild autism’ - no such thing. 🙄

God I wish all these self-diagnosis ‘neurospicy’ idiots would piss off and move on to the next trendy affliction.

Ah but by saying I’ve got “mild autism” it means they can do whatever they want as a person without autism, but then when you’re rude or unreasonable you can blame it on your “mild autism” without it restricting your life.

Good on you for keeping a low threshold with him. As others have said don't let him use his "autism" as an excuse or get out of jail free card for bad behaviour

Enjoy the rest of your holiday!

... turn to him and say Really? You're going on holiday. Cheer up your miserable that (sic)

Really???
I had to travel abroad because my mother fell into a coma while on holidays, and no one knew if she'd survive.
My cousin had to fly home from the US for her father's funeral.
Do you really think we should cheer up for you?? Nice holidays for us - not!
Maybe try not to be so ignorant or judgemental in future @Bimblebombzle.

Hopefully you weren't rude or aggressive to airport staff though. There is never any excuse for that.

Of course I wasn't!! Don't try to say things I didn't say.

But @Bimblebombzle said, as I quoted, Really? You're going on holiday. Cheer up your miserable... I wasn't going on holiday I was going to say goodbye to my dying mother. Why should I have to "Cheer up".

Thing is, those staff don’t actually work for Ryanair. They wear the uniform but work for a ground handling company and on their next flight will be wearing a uniform of a different airline. So a ‘United front against Ryanair’ well, it wouldn’t have been! They probably agreed with your DH but its safety. If that bag can’t fit into the overhead compartment then it can become a projectile mid-flight. So it needs to go into the cargo hold.

Hmmmm he’s had a full day to cook up that apology and try to make you feel bad for him. What a load of rubbish, if he purposely over packed he’s had pre motive to purposely sabotage all your holidays! Being autistic doesn’t make you selfish, scheming and nasty. And then saying he wants a room in his own for peace and quiet ?! Oh please!!! 🙄 I can even guarantee all men would want this. I wouldn’t entertain him.

You sound proud of him ?

Sorry, I wasn't suggesting you would have been rude, in context to her post she was saying how rude someone was and that she wanted to say that back, which in the circumstances I understand why she felt that way, and if the person was having a tough time but hadnt been rude hopefully she would not have even thought to want to react in that way.

Obviously no one should ever say out loud cheer up, I have witnessed someone doing this at work and the person had found their brother dead at his house the night before.

Autism is a spectrum, though. I knew 2 kids diagnosed autistic. One went to a special school attached to the Primary school, so was encouraged to mix for some things. He started to communicate and holds down a job now, in his 30s. The other was at the other end, had to be in a special facility most of the time. We could take him out, obviously, but he would just take off running random directions if we were walking in the street if he wasn’t held , indoors spent his time sitting ignoring what was happening round him, flicking a shoe lace all day. He was unpredictable, unable to take on any tasks, totally uncommunicative. Eating out, we’d be glared at for his noises and lace flicking.

Are you going to stay with him?

Good luck @AskingForTacos . One thing your partner can do already is to try not to go into ‘what if’ mode. I used to do this. My Mum used to say ‘you cannot live your life by ‘what if’ and ‘if only’. You can do the stuff you have control over - packing, passports, contingency time built in when travelling - but have to learn to let go of some of the rest. It does actually work. Hope you manage to sort things out in a way that works for you - whatever that looks like.

I missed this the first time:

"he thinks I was a cow for leaving him"

We are in the suburbs of get-the-fuck-out-of-my-life city here, next stop city centre.

I have seen a lot of threads on here about unreasonable behaviour from men (not just from men but much of the time), and I genuinely don't understand why some men act this way. The vast majority of the time there is only one direction that sort of behaviour can go and it is not in a direction favourable to the perpetrator. Even if the behaviour gets them what they want, they will still be looked on as a twat and those involved will lose respect for him, so what is the net benefit in the end?

yea right we all go round calling staff bitches when wevgot autism

its just insulting

The ASD spectrum is not a scale nor a gradient. It doesn’t go from mild to severe. Its like the colour spectrum with different colours (traits/symptoms of varying degrees) at different points.

Your DH sounds similar in some ways to my exDH - my ex wasn't rude to other people, but he basically sabotaged every family holiday we went on.

Our dc are now teens but when they were small we always went on holidays in the UK as exDH always had an excuse why he didn't want to go abroad. The stress from him about packing up and going away anywhere was literally unbelievable. When we were there he made it clear that he wasn't enjoying it, and would often be silent or in a mood.

Two years ago I said to him I really wanted to take the dc abroad - they'd never been and I knew they'd enjoy it. I'd asked him many times previously about going abroad but he always said no. Exdh agreed but a few weeks before we were due to go had a massive rant at me about how he'd felt railroaded into agreeing for us to go abroad, and how his views didn't count, and he didn't want to go.

He ended up coming abroad with us. When we got to the holiday place it was a nightmare. The place was lovely but exdh spent the whole time in a mood, barely talking to me. I tried to organise a few fun trips out for us all - exDH was constantly snapping at me or blaming me for things. I spent a lot of the holiday on the verge of tears as I'd so wanted it to be a lovely experience for us all.

Anyway, long story short, I have now separated from him. This sort of thing was only one of the reasons, but I've now realised that he can only cope with a very simple life, sticking to his routine, and anything else causes him a huge amount of stress (which he used to then take out on me).

I am pretty sure exDH is neurodiverse (not that that excuses his behaviour towards me at all).

I think it's positive that your DH seems willing to accept some responsibility for his behaviour if he is planning to pursue a diagnosis. I feel for you as it's not an easy situation - I hope you and the dc manage to have a relaxing, happy holiday.

But you have to agree that it affects people in different ways and some of those ways are more ‘debilitating’ in that it stops people from doing day to day stuff more than others.

So no it’s not a gradient.
But there are varying level of disability, with level 1, 2 and 3 separating how much it affects the person on day to day basis. Which was what @DearDenimEagle was hinting at.

If you'd have left with him, You'd likely have heard nothing bit how he's in the right and the staff were being jobsworth bitches, and then you've got the choice of agreeing or disagreeing with him. I can't imagine either would make for a fun night.

With you having gone, he's seen that he was really unreasonable, and neither of you have had to have an evening of uncomfortable disappointment. I think it's kind of the right thing to have done tbh.

He did so well masking his ‘autism’ for years until you were too far in to easily get rid of him. Now suddenly he needs to swear at public facing workers and can’t help it because he has special circumstances. Poor little lamb.

Let us know you are OK. You dared not to agree with him.

Indeed. Most people I know who are autistic are exceptionally polite to service staff, as they are aware the some social skills don’t come naturally to them so they work at it. I know others who might come across as reserved or shy , as they would avoid more than a couple of words of interaction.

However I don’t know of any who manage every social interaction easily, except with people they feel are beneath them, when they shout, make demands and swear at staff who don’t do exactly what they want. That sounds more like a large sense of entitlement to me.

Many autistic people would do almost anything to avoid a scene like that. Eg weigh and measure their bag at home to make sure it complies with the rules. Especially rules like this one that are clearly laid out in advance and seem logical ( bags must fit in the allotted space ).

And yes I do know that all autistic people are different. But just like NT people, pattern analysis is possible.

I know someone mentioned earlier in the thread but please check that Ryanair haven’t cancelled his flight home as the outward journey wasn’t used.
it might well be that he will have to buy a new ticket and possibly not with Ryanair.

This not paying baggage fee is going to cost him a hell of a lot more!!

Hope you're enjoying your hols @AskingForTacos ⛱️ 🌞

As quite a few people were interested, here's UK government evidence of the detriment of lost school days, even a few, on education and future prospects. Hope a few of those who have sloppy attitudes to attendence can update their knowledge!

How attendance affects attainment
Recent research by the Department for Education shows just how closely attendance and attainment are linked.
At primary school, children who attend school nearly every day in Year 6 (95-100% attendance) are 30% more likely to reach the expected standard in reading, writing and maths compared to similar pupils who attend 90-95% of the time.

The link is even stronger at secondary school. Year 11 pupils with near-perfect attendance are almost twice as likely to achieve grade 5 in English and Maths GCSE, compared to similar pupils attending 90-95% of the time. In other words, missing just 10 extra days a year reduces the likelihood of achieving these grades by around 50%.