Should husband have got taxi at 4am after finishing work late?

[Groay]

Husband is a pilot. He ended up at an airport that is not his home base. This meant he stayed overnight in a hotel. I was fine with this. But I have since learned that everyone except him chose to get in a paid for taxi in the very early hours. Husband’s taxi was for 2pm the next day. Everyone else wanted to gain that day back by getting the travel over and done with.

It meant that I had to cancel an event I wanted to go to. Dh knows I was trying to figure out alternative childcare but the hassle wasn’t worth it in the end so I sacked it off.

Do I have a right to be mad? Dh could’ve slept for three hours in the taxi and then driven the 20 mins home. And had basically the whole next day to chill with the odd drop off here and there for kids.

He said he was knackered. He FaceTimed me from bed and he was definitely tired but I can tell when he’s exhausted. He was actually quite talkative and I had to say get some sleep to him! I was up with poorly baby

If a pilot thinks he ought to rest, he ought to rest. As his wife you ought to know that. Would you rather he let you decide when he should rest and subsequently brought a plane down?

Look, I'm happy to point out when I think someone's partner is slacking and even I think this was reasonable on his part. No one else's actions matter as working on the plane then being a passenger in a taxi is different to flying the plane then driving home at the end. There is quite a lot of 'ooh take care of the man with his big job' on MN but often that turns out to be people working in marketing or whatever. Bit different if you could kill people if you're tired from work.

The thing to take from it is to always arrange belt and braces childcare if you have something on that's important to you.

YABU. A 4am finish, 3hr cab journey arriving at 7am. Then a 20 minute drive home on no sleep, so he could then look after the kids and ferry them about during the day. Absolutely not.

And frankly, on such little sleep I wouldn’t have wanted him driving himself around, not to mention the kids!

Being a pilot is irrelevant here. He's done his piloting, he's not working the next day, he's just got to get home.

In that situation, whether he's a pilot, a retail worker, a brain surgeon or a call centre worker is irrelevant. The other option people are overlooking is he could have got the paid taxi back to his home airport and then paid for a taxi back home, so he would have done no driving until he'd slept for about 5 hours (plus anything he managed in the taxi).

In reality though, people do push through tiredness all the time when they have young kids, because for a lot of people they otherwise wouldn't be able to work for about 5 years.

The OP clearly was still up when her husband arrived, and her other kids would have woken for the day a couple of hours later. Not a single person has expressed concern that she's caring for multiple kids and driving around with them on virtually zero sleep.

That's not to say. I think he was unreasonable but that I can understand both sides of it, and how what's reasonable can feel very warped when you're permanently sleep deprived and have no choice but to get on with it.

YABU, if he needs to sleep then he needs to sleep.

This is a very sexist response.

The type of event is important to understand if DH was unreasonable but your reply was sexist and uncalled for.

Attitudes like yours is why I never recommend that women become SAHMs as some men see them as beneath them and nothing they do is of any importance.

It’s understandable that you’re disappointed that you couldn’t go to your event but I don’t think he was unreasonable to stay in the hotel at all.

PPs are disagreeing with you but you’re clearly not going to change your mind judging by your responses.

I think if you’re annoyed about this there are bigger issues in play. If you felt content and supported this wouldn’t be an issue, you’d take it at face value: he was tired, he stayed in a hotel to sleep. The fact that you’re annoyed suggests you suspect him of shirking, or not wanting to be around you and the kids as much as his colleagues do their families.

I’d rather DP came home rested than a bit early. But then DP goes away/out quite rarely, and works extremely sociable hours.

Indeed! He was so proud to declare that he was a man and not a jealous woman as well 😂 I don’t even understand why men are on here anyway. We can’t have anything that they don’t want to rule or tell us we’re doing wrong. Haven’t they got incel correspondence to deal with?

Well he could have got the taxi home instead of to his car, and picked the car up later once he'd slept properly. But I don't blame him for wanting to sleep immediately, in peace vs potentially being awake another 3 hours and 20 and then being pestered all morning by kids and household noise.

Again, articulated way better than I managed to do. Totally agree.

Being a pilot is not irrelevant. Marketing executives don’t kill people if they are tired, pilots do.

Having friends with pilot husbands, I can see both sides. Their work makes it hard to be there for their families, and they need to prioritise the times that it really matters to their partner or it doesn't happen. That's why I think you are annoyed OP and I get it. And to be brutally honest, he earns enough that if he wasn't feeling up to driving the 15 minutes home from the airport and the drop offs and back to work the next day, he could afford taxis without any drama... and he would have done that if it mattered to him. Airline staff are experts at sleeping in unusual places, he 100% could have slept in the taxi. It sounds like he opted for the easy life and left OP to pick up the slack, and if that happens a lot I would be one pissed off wife.

If it doesn't usually play out like this, then I'd put it down to the usual downsides to being married to a pilot.

I pushed through tiredness many times. Single mother, solely looked after the kids 24/7 through their entire childhood. I wouldn’t have wanted to take a three hour taxi journey home, followed by a drive if there was a hotel close by, but I would have weighed up the pros and cons before making a decision.

This!

No you’re not right to be mad imo. He’s just worked a full day, it’s 3am and you then want him to spend 3 hours dozing sitting up in a taxi followed by a day where he doesn’t really get to sleep because he has to ferry kids around.

He was probably exhausted so he slept. Sleep and health comes above events imo.

You can be upset that you missed the event without blaming him for something that was works fault. It’s just one of those things.

yanbu for being disappointed to miss your event but equally he is not unreasonable for sleeping at the hotel

Lol, the only people either might kill is on the road because marketing executive or pilot, they are on their way HOME. He's done his flying, the other dude has done his marketing. On the way home the job is irrelevant. I can only assume you have either not read or not understood the situation here.

Agreed, but it really does sound like there was ample time for him to get decent quality and quantity of sleep once home before his next flight.

I would prefer the hotel too, especially after such a long day. Couldn't he have got a taxi before 2pm? Xx

That the thing I would be questioning, not so much the overnight at the hotel. Why so late in the day?

I think it makes a difference if he'd just piloted a 14 hour flight from the other side of the world, or a short hop of 1 hour. His level of knackeredness would be totally different! Sleeping in a car for 3 hours is also not proper restful sleep.

He was very tired after focusing on his very responsible job until the early hours of the morning, and you expected him to get by on 3 hours' sleep (if he had managed to get to sleep) in a taxi. I think it's reasonable to want to have a proper night's sleep after a hard day at work which ends very late. And if you don't get a proper night's sleep, catch-up sleep during the day isn't the same thing and you're likely to remain adversely affected for a couple of days afterwards. Not ideal for a pilot. Maybe he takes the responsibility of being in charge of an aircraft more seriously than you do. And presumably most of the rest of the crew were air stewards and stewardesses, not pilots.

yab hugely unreasonable. His job is safety critical and rest is important. You think he can sleep to order for 3 hours in a taxi then wake up to drive home then sleep again?! don't be ridiculous! He made a sensible decision to sleep over.

I get that it’s an annoyance but think it depends on how long his flight was? If it was a 2 hour flight then he should have made the effort to go home, if it was 8 hours then that’s a long time to be focused and must be exhausting, I don’t think I could face a 3.5 trip home after that either