To be fuming that DH has spent the whole day on his laptop?

[MamaOnTheCoast]

DH has spent the whole day on his laptop “working” in his home office and he hasn’t even seen me and the DC all day! He was up at 5am (the kids woke up at 6am) and he is still in his home office “working” now so we haven’t seen him all day! He even refused Christmas dinner as he said he was “too busy working”. DH does a senior office based job and he wasn’t meant to be working at all over Christmas but he is saying he apparently has to work today “because it’s urgent”! It’s Christmas Day and we haven’t seen him all day and DH can’t see the problem with this! The kids are really upset about it too! AIBU to be livid with DH over this? DH literally doesn’t see the problem but I’m fuming and the kids are upset too!

Is something really bad happening at his work? That has required time to deal with? Is there an emergency? Does he work in am industry that requires people to work on christmas day? Was it prearranged for him to work xmas morning? And it has needed to continue.

Sorry just wondering if there is any possible way he could justify his behaviour. Before i completely judge his behaviour as unreasonable and inconsiderate. Because otherwise how can he possibly justify leaving you to do xmas day alone he is out of order and im sure if you had known you would have made alternative plans x

..so, this person who is apparently an approved foster carer “doesn’t see the problem” with being in the office all of Christmas Day and not coming out even to eat. Okay.

There are so many computer based roles that could require this. Servers or services going down. However, OP would know her DH was 'on call' and would have experienced this previously. And her DH would very easily say 'incident on,' and she'd likely understand.

I feel like I read the words home office about a thousand times in this thread.

No it doesn’t

I fear that the problem may be that he views the foster children as very much not his, and not his responsibility, and has no love for them TO show. He absolutely could be having to deal with a massive work emergency, in which case I would expect him to have been able to explain to the Op so she understood what was happening. The lack of explanation on top of the rest of his behaviour makes it sounds more like something is just very wrong, such as a gambling addiction, breakdown, or having decided to opt out of the marriage and of having foster children, and is hiding until Christmas is over and he can leave more easily.

My husband has had to build an AI program that went live yesterday. This could of gone either way as he has had to teach himself and he really needed to get it right as it was to record the company Jan sales release.. Without his job we would lose our home so if he had to work we wouldn’t have much choice.

Agree. What a shitbag to treat those kids that way.

I'd be realising he's not someone I can rely on, so wondering what the point of having him around is.

i was just thinking is is mi5/mi6 etc

Does he have an especially important job, that continues over Christmas? National security or something? If not, your husband is blatantly a reason your husband is avoiding you, sorry.

Hope you and foster children managed a happy Christmas despite his sulky attitude x

But the point there is, you know about it, and what's going on, why he may have needed to have worked, etc. OP's OH has apparently given no explanation whatsoever, which, unless there is a very good reason for not providing a reason, is frankly unforgivable IMO.

There was no such thing as the internet when I was little.
My dad hated Christmas - so he started drinking early and would sit in the living room and watch tv and drink and we were warned not to bother him.
This happened every year.

I mean f**k the little kids, Daddy has a problem coping today so we’re going to indulge him year after year after year AFTER YEAR…

All because of some stupid gift he got his mother that she didn’t like and therefore poor Daddy was traumatised the rest of his life.

MASSIVE EYEROLL.

On a call to a colleague. I don't think so. Something fishy going on. Could be anything. Does he do this at weekends?

He clearly doesn't want to be around children that are not his.
Awful behaviour.
How come you are fostering so many children if your husband has zero interest?
What a horrible message to send vulnerable children.

You know he's not working, right?

I’d have tipped his Christmas dinner on his keyboard! Why on earth are you putting up with this?

Do you work in a similar role to your husband @MamaOnTheCoast? Is it a role where there are emergencies that can't wait because they will cost the organisation a substantial amount? Where I work we have urgent, unavoidable things at all hours / days. Christmas is not immune. Senior people can't just say not today. They have to work so that the lower down people can have the day off.

Without knowing what your husband does, it's impossible to say if he's been unreasonable and the work could wait.

The Op needs to report her reply stating the children's ages, could be very outing to a social worker / teacher etc. Possibly even the birth parents assuming all the children are from one family.

If he's so busy that he has to work all day on Christmas day when he's supposed to be on holiday then he's incompetent.

So many unanswered questions and scenarios here. I think we need the OP to give an update with some more context as we have gone down every possible route and explanation.
I think the only thing not mentioned is that he maybe works for Elon Musk and one of his Starlink Satellites has hit Santa's sleigh and wiped out Rudolph!

I don't see how we can know whether it's unreasonable until we know the type of field. All those saying there is "no way" this type/timing/duration of emergency could happen have a rather limited sense of the types of jobs out there. Mine certainly could have this.

Whether your husband's can is the real question.

I don't see how 14 hours is an affair.

A financial problem maybe that he is desperately trying to solve before you catch him, maybe.

Does he work in security? What job does he do?

I’m always amazed at how many Mumsnetters have absolutely zero notion of any jobs being different from those in their own narrow range of life experience.

All the people saying ‘Well unless he’s a police officer / surgeon there’s no way he’d have to work on Christmas Day’ and ‘Nobody with an office job would have to do this’ are really making me laugh. Loads of people have office jobs, at all levels, that might require them to do emergency work on Christmas Day. Do people not realise that if, eg, there’s a cyber attack on Christmas Day, it’s not only the IT people who would need to be working? In reality there would be a whole incident management team working. It could include press officers, comms officers, payroll, HR, facilities, customer service managers, logistics managers. I’ve worked in the comms team in the public sector and ended up working from around 6pm on Boxing Day throughout the entire night until around lunchtime the following day, and that was in connection with an incident that could just as easily have happened on Christmas Day.

The OP obviously won’t say what her husband does or where he works, so we don’t know. But it isn’t actually unfeasible at all that someone with an ordinary office job might have to work on Christmas Day due to an unforeseen incident.

What does he do as a job?
Really sorry op but this sounds like an affair/gambling or some other not work related problem to me.