What do I do?

[Doggypaws]

I really dont know what to do. I’ve been with my fiance 12 years now. There have been a couple of times where he’s behaved so badly I should have left but my circumstances aren’t easy.
Anyway, just wanted opinions on this and advice.
So on Sunday night about 10pm my mum phoned me hysterical saying that my dad had fallen on the pavement outside putting the bin out, and banged his head, he couldn’t get up. There were some youngsters there who were trying to help him. They were waiting on an ambulance that was probably going to be about half an hour. My mum is 81 and fractured her back last year due to osteoporosis. My dad is 88. Id had 2 glasses of wine although I felt able to drive I obviously couldn’t risk it. My fiance was upstairs in bed. When I went up to tell him I just assumed he’d offer to drive me. He’s a taxi driver who gets up at 3am every day, and works long hours. I appreciate he needs his sleep. Anyway I told him what happened, he was half asleep, not realising I’d had a drink he had an attitude and said ‘we’re not moving the cars around’, my car was behind his in the driveway. I said I’d had a drink so can’t drive anyway. Realising he was going to have an attitude about it I didn’t even ask for a lift and called a taxi from the company he works for! It took me to the hospital and I said to my folks I’d meet them there, thinking they wouldn’t be long. They arrived an hour later but only thanks to some kind passers by who helped him off the pavement and drove them to a&e! By this time it was midnight. We were there until 6am. My fiance by this time was out working. He said he’d pick us up and take us all home and to just tell him when. When he’d helped my parents into the house and I was making them a cup of tea he said ‘sorry about this morning, I was really tired’. He didn’t specify which bit he was sorry about, also he NEVER apologises, so he maybe realised how horrible his attitude was. He’s been nicey nice ever since Sunday. I’ve said nothing more to him about it but I’m angry. If he’d given me a lift we could have got my dad off that pavement and to the hospital a lot sooner. It really upsets me.
There’s been other stuff over the years which my best friend said I’d be justified in leaving him over. But we have a house together, in an area I love. It’s 2 mins from my daughters school (she’s 13) and she’s settled there. I’ve had a difficult past. My daughters dad was abusive to me and I left him when she was 1yrs old as I couldn’t cope with him anymore. Over the years he’s dragged me to court unreasonably, and spent thousands that I don’t have. When I met my current partner I thought he was amazing, but sometimes he’s behaved so awful towards me that I’ve seriously questioned it. Most of the time we get on great and he’s good to us, but sometimes he’s a complete a££ho//!!
if I try and speak to him he usually shouts over me and makes what could have been a reasonable discussion 500 times worse and will then ignore me for several days!!
Advice would be appreciated.
Thank you in advance.

The particular example you have given here doesn't sound all that bad, though I understand from your perspective worrying about your dad it would seem horrendous.

If he's up at 3am, he's presumably gone to bed around 7/8pm so when you went up to him at 10pm he'd have been fast asleep. Are you sure that he fully understood the gravity of the situation whilst he was still half asleep.

Also, if he had woken up there and then and given you a lift, wouldn't you have still gone straight to the hospital thinking the ambulance would already be with your father? If so, your father wouldn't have got to the hospital any sooner.

As for the shouting over you and ignoring you for days on end that is not good and certainly needs addressing. Depending on the severity and frequency of that behavior, it could be classed as abuse.

If things are usually good between you, I would perhaps accept his apology for this occasion and put it down to him being half asleep and not realising the seriousness.

On the basis of this story alone, in which you woke your fiancé to tell him your dad had had a fall, didn't ask him for a lift but got yourself to the hospital under your own steam, then your fiancé took time out of his working day to drive you all back to your parents', helped your dad into the house and apologised to you, it's a YABU from me.

OTOH, the shouting and silent treatment are horribly abusive and not to be tolerated. I imagine there's far, far more to this and I'd urge you to use this thread to explore your relationship as you are clearly unhappy in it.

@PearTreeBoati think your response is very rational. Just that the OP and her dp wouldn’t have known the timelines.
so given the uncertainty shouldn’t he have woke up and driven her knowing she was drinking? His lack of empathy is just awful and I would leave too over just this one thing. It’s a once off, they didn’t know how bad the dad is and they are so elderly.

This particular example I don’t think is the end of the world; but I’d leave because the only positive thing you’ve managed to say about the relationship in all of the above is “But we have a house together, in an area I love.” I’d rather live in a tiny flat above a shop and rebuild my life under my own steam than waste my life away with somebody in a relationship which had given me thoughts of leaving multiple times for the sake of a nice house. You don’t “get on great” if you have those thoughts on a regular basis, you just have a relationship which isn’t totally shit all of the time.

This specific example sounds fine to me - he needed his sleep for work, you had another easy option to get there (you beat your parents to it even), it wasn't like your dad was alone and waiting for you to get there or anything. Sounds like a terrible night but I don't see how your husband would have done anything by making himself too tired to work (presumably he just wouldn't get paid if he didn't work). He even came to pick you up afterwards.

BUT... agree that if the only positive you have about a relationship is financial it doesn't sound great. So there's clearly more to it than this example.

Also OP, you have a daughter, who is being forced to live with a man who isn’t even her father, who shouts and can’t have a reasonable disagreement and then gives the silent treatment for days on end, and no doubt leaves you miserable and off colour during all that time. You can’t pretend that she’s going to be unaware of all of this. And on top of that, she’s of an age where she’s forming her own template for what her adult relationships should look like based on those she sees at home. What’s she learning? That it’s fine for a partner to behave like this and normal to just sit back and take it because of a nice place to live and because sometimes it isn’t all bad.

Thank you for all the replies so far. It’s so difficult. A lot of the time we get on great, have a laugh etc, so I don’t want to leave him, but sometimes his behaviour has been so u justifiable I don’t know what to do. Two years ago I was on a night out. I hardly ever go properly out, but it was my good friend’s sister who was over from Spain and she was going back there in a few days. Anyway I ended up going to a nightclub, not been to one in years. I was drunk, we all were, but not that bad. I was also wearing trainers, but I came off a step and broke my ankle. They couldn’t get an ambulance and it was 2am. My fiance was doing a different job then, working long hours and was supposed to be up at 5am, anyway my friend phoned him and told him he needed to pick me up and get me to a hospital. He was furious at me. I kept saying it was an accident etc. I was kept in for a week, and I think he visited me twice. He even FaceTimed me one night saying this stuff ‘always happens to him!’. My daughter wanted to come see me but he said he was too tired, which I did understand but I was really upset about it. There was no compassion or affection there. When he did come in he pretended to shove my overnight bag against my ankle and I said to ‘wise up, that wasn’t funny’. It was my mum who helped me home, this was before she fractured her back so she was able to, but again, he wasn’t there for me. It took him about 2 weeks after I got home before he spoke to me again. The massive problem is the jobs he does are ‘if he doesn’t work, he doesn’t get paid’. I work mon-Fri afternoons,mainly to be there for my daughter but recently I’ve asked for more hours but so far there’s nothing. I work full time when my back to back is on holiday or off sick. The other major time was when we went on holiday, my daughter got tonsillitis. She literally came back from a holiday with her dad. My fiance wasn’t happy she was going away with him first then with us as she nearly always got unwell when she was with him. Anyway I tried to calmly tell him she wasn’t well and could we just eat in the hotel that night. He lost the plot, stormed off, swore at me saying it had ruined the holiday he’d worked hard for. The next morning he woke early then started having a go at me again, told me I was a bad mother etc, my daughter was in the same room unwell. He was drunk btw. I was so upset, kept apologising to my daughter for his behaviour. He ignored me all that next day then that night acted like nothing had happened. No apology. I’d planned to leave him but it was shortly after that I broke my ankle. Anyway apart from these flare ups we do generally have a good relationship and he and my daughter are getting on well. She can’t stand her dad right now due to his behaviour so I don’t want to go and rock the boat. Maybe relationship counselling? But I don’t know if he’d do it?

I’ve read it back and it sounds dreadful, but these incidents are spread widely apart and in between that we get on well and he is caring and good to my daughter and generous. This is why maybe relationship counselling could maybe be a suggestion to get him to deal with things better. Oh god I just don’t know. I’m 50 next year, the thought of going back to square one at my age is scary and just sad, plus I’d really miss him because he has a very good side to him. I just don’t know what to do. My best friend is brutally honest. She knows everything and she said she knows he’s not a bad person and does like him but sometimes his behaviour is unjustifiable.
The night of my dad falling he’d gone to his bed around 9, so not that long before I woke him. If he’d offered a lift I’d have said for us to go to their house first and maybe we could have helped my dad sooner.

As you work part time, surely you could claim Universal credit if you were not with him ?

you are also available for full time work and it is possible that more hours will come up at work.

Are you actually planning on getting married ?

didn't see if you rent or have a mortgage ?

there is an online calculator which can tell you how much, if any, universal credit you could receive based on being a single parent with a dependent child

It sounds as though a lot of these incidents happen when one or both of you have been drinking. Perhaps that’s part of the problem and you both need to take a look at how it affects you both and the things which happen afterwards. I wouldn’t put up with his outbursts and silent treatment, and I’d have left years ago, but equally, if drunk DH and his drunk friends phoned me in the small hours from a nightclub wanting me to come and drive to hospital for an ankle I’d do it, whilst also thinking “FFS, why can’t you call an actual taxi or whatever other means you were all planning to get your asses home in?”

Relationship counselling only works if you’re both prepared to accept you don’t communicate well and want to get better at it. It doesn’t work if you each entrench your view that you’re right and the other is wrong, or if you aren’t both prepared to develop better communication tools. I’d not have much faith in the ability to do that if a man who’d spent the entire relationship following up each argument with days of silent treatment.

We have a mortgage.

i understand about the drunk phone call asking for help. I totally get that. This is why I sometimes do see things from his point of view as id probably be p*ed off too. He’s curtailed his drinking as he was very rude to my best pal at Xmas and he apologised and said he’d stop drinking so much and he has done. He had underlying issues from how his parents treated him. He also no longer talks to his brother as he says that he is as bad as his dad. They’d a huge argument, I wasn’t there but it sounds like his brother was at fault. So he had no family, just me, my daughter and his daughter. He says I’m his best friend etc, I do feel so bad for him.

Not wanting to be rude, but I think you are expecting far too much from a person that by the sounds of it works really hard and functions with very little sleep.

He was in bed, asleep, and had to get up in 5 hours, so probably had no idea of the severity of the situation. I wouldn't have even thought to wake my DH up, but would have just immediately called a taxi and got taken round to their house.

And the whole drunk thing - again, just get a taxi!

I agree with what the other poster is saying - perhaps don't drink so much when you're at home.

Just to say that on that Sunday he’d not worked the whole weekend and had been at the football all day, which he’s entitled to do but he wasn’t that level of tired. Also he works his own hours, so could have gone in later or not at all, it’s his choice.