AIBU to be angry at my husband for spending 3.5 hours at the gym on the day of our baby girls first birthday?

[burns4273]

Please help.

3.5 hours on your child’s first birthday? What a selfish twat. Your poor daughter.

Not enough context to say.

If there was a party planned and he’s left you to do all the sorting then YANBU.

If you had plans and he missed them for the gym then YANBU.

If there were no plans for that time anyway and him being at the gym didn’t really impact you & you also get some free time then YABU.

Of course he was BU.

I can’t imagine choosing to spend that much time away from my DD on her birthday.

He doesn’t need to be chained to her but it’s one day that you would make an effort to spend it with that person.

If you had to go to the gym you would go for less time, not 1/4 of her day.

It’s normally their own birthdays they aren’t interested in, not their child’s.
Christ, the low standards on here.

This.

I'd say it's an unreasonable amount of time to spend doing any hobby really if you have a baby at home and are expecting your partner to pick up the slack, but especially when it's just the gym and most people can be in and out in 90 mins tops.

YANBU op.
DH wouldn’t have even considered doing anything solo on DCs 1st Bday because he wanted to have the day with them.

YADNBU

How does spending 3.5 hours at the gym, along with working or not, not impact your wife with a baby?

Omg some of these replies are ridiculous. Of course it's unreasonable! If this was a man posting on here saying that the mum had gone out for 3.5 hours on their daughter's first birthday, everyone would be up in arms!

It just shows that some people have really low standards from men / their partners / father of their children.

OP - of course you're not being unreasonable. It doesn't matter if you had absolutely nothing planned - it's your child's first birthday. They don't get another one. It's not about whether they remember it either, YOU will. And for one of their parents to disappear for 3.5 hours to do something that is absolutely unnecessary that could be done on any other day of the year, is out of order. It shows you where his priorities are!

I bet you wouldn't dream of doing that, so why is it okay that her dad did? I'd be upset if it was my partner too!

That’s an unreasonable amount of time at the gym on any occasion.

3.5 hours in the gym is ridiculous but a 1yo has no concept of birthdays so I genuinely can’t see an issue with him going out to do a hobby.

She’ll have no idea of the significance of the day. I’m sure she won’t care - he was still around for a lot of the day. That said, if it left OP organising a celebration alone then 3.5 hrs seems a lot. I’d say 2hrs all in including travel sounds more reasonable.

It depends on what she was doing then. Was she napping? Or did he miss her birthday fun?

If she missed her birthday fun, then it’s sad.

Spot on. It is imbecilic to believe, however much you desperately want to, that a one year old child cares, or is in the least remotely aware of, their 'first birthday'.
It's like 'baby's first christmas'. Spare us. More important is 'mummy's third gin' to get through the day.

3.5 hours is taking the piss whatever way you look at it. YANBU.

The mother cares though, as she’s posted - you know the left doing the childcare and picking up slack.
Baby’s first Christmas was also special in our house, I certainly wouldn’t refer to any parent excited about either of the occasions “imbecilic”.

We need context on this.
If he had been to work and then went to the gym as soon as he got home, then YABU.
If he was home, did some kind of celebration and then went to the gym YABU.
If he went to the gym instead of a planned day out, YANBU.
It really depends what you communicated with him.
I can't even remember my children's first birthdays, I imagine we were working and then did something at the weekend.

Super shitty thing to do. I’d be fuming

I used to work in a gym and I noticed that some men seemed to be in there 24/7. If their wives chased them up you would hear them protesting on the phone about how surely she wants them to look good, that they were working hard in the gym. I had to refrain from asking them if they didn't realise that housework also counts as exercise, as does cooking and running around after the DCs.

I agree. And I assumed that they might have been having a party for friends and family (that's what a lot of people I know did/do) and that she had been left to organise the whole thing on her own.

A reminder: 3.5 hours at the gym might actually be 5/6 hours because there is getting there working out, showering and then the travel home. So virtually the whole day.

She doesn't know it's her birthday, she's a baby.

Or it could be all night too if they live a really long way away. Perhaps the gym is in Inverness? And he has to walk because they don't have a car? Could be weeks actually.

No information from the OP. Pointless thread and Im even more pointless for reading it.

You can’t force other people to care about the things you care about, though, that’s the problem.