Husband threatening divorce over a holiday.

[KiggiCalli]

I would like to take my daughter to Africa on holiday. For context, I am Black British and my husband is white. He does not like long-haul flights and is refusing to agree to the trip. His view is that because I visited South Africa four years ago, there is no need for us to travel to Africa again, and that we should choose a closer destination such as Europe instead.
My daughter, who is of mixed African heritage, has never been to Africa and is devastated that she is not being allowed to go.

My husband is threatening to divorce me, should I go ahead and book the holiday?

Depends if there’s more to it? His reaction is quite extreme so is he worried you’re going to stay out there ….maybe if you haven’t got a good marriage? Is he worried it’s not safe for his daughter?

Is it because you are not going where home used to be, so he is failing to see the historical reason for going?

would he change his mind if you were retracing family history ties ?

If it was a holiday where you would see your family I would agree. But just to visit a country you have no relation to whatsoever? Only because you're black and it's in Africa? I understand your husband. I think family holidays should be decided by both partners.

Why didn't you take her four years ago?

wow!! Shocking! what a dick, pathetic and controlling. I would say book it and go anyways, but the risk there is that he could report you for international child abduction.

I don't think it's quite this simple. For most people a holiday is a huge part of their budget. I can't physically stop my DH from going on an expensive holiday without consulting me but I'd be seriously pissed if he did. If he took my daughter out of the country without my approval I wouldn't quite go as extreme as divorce but it's not something that I'd forgive easily and it would make me feel very vulnerable as well as pissed. I wouldn't dream of spending thousands on a holiday and travelling hours on a flight if my DH wasn't comfortable with it tbh.

I’m not sure @KiggiCalli is coming back but at the moment she doesn’t seem to really understand his issue so really that conversation needs to be had

and he needs to understand why this his important to her - maybe it’s not the country of her heritage but I can understand why she would want to take her child to a part of the world where her mother is not a minority

Your partner is missing out hugely. We are a mixed couple too, and we love travelling to Africa. (Our 6 year old has already been to 3 African countries, and we've booked to visit another 2 next year). X

First, stop saying your daughter isn't "allowed" to go, as if it's something directed at her.

Second, why can't you say, "Okay, Baby Jane and I will just make a short trip to Africa alone, and we'll do our big holiday to Europe later on with the three of us"?

Third, if he is seriously threatening to divorce you, then you should take the money earmarked for the holiday and spend it on marriage counseling, because you're in more trouble than you seem to realize.

Ok with Vietnam so it’s not the distance. And SA is easy long haul - very little time difference.
Money isn’t the issue and the OP is black British, not visiting family or old bf so not likely to bolt.
My personal view is he’s scared - including for himself.
Rather than admit this - esp as relates to himself he’s gone to extreme of divorce.

This is a ridiculous thing to threaten divorce over. Just talk it out and find a compromise. If you can't, there's far more going wrong in your relationship that just this.

I have zero African heritage but have worked in Tanzania and consider that one of the best things I've ever done. I was glad to take my daughter years later.

Your husband is completely unreasonable, especially if he would consider Vietnam. He doesn't get to stop his daughter taking an interest in her mum's roots.

Of course journeys like this can always go wrong. She'll only see a tiny, somewhat random slice of one African country, so she shouldn't take it personally if she doesn't take to it.

That's the sort of thing you should have time to think about, rather than your husband's permission. I hope he snaps out of it.

Completely unreasonable for him to try and prevent you and your daughter from going, this is your heritage and that's important!
That aside- it shouldn't matter where you want to go, swindon or sweden or spain or south africa, threatening divorce because you won't do as he says makes him a controlling arsehole. You're probably better off without him anyway.

You clearly have the means to go and if he doesn't want to he doesn't have to, but he should never try and stop you and your daughter. It's controlling to threaten you with divorce over it.

See, I wouldn't be talking this over with him. He is stating what their marriage is worth to him. He's only interested if the family goes to Vietnam when he says so.

He doesn't want his brown-skinned wife and child if they visit Africa. This is literally what he's said.

The only sane reply is "Well, piss off to Vietnam, then. The divorce petition will be waiting when you get back. Thanks for showing how much we mean to you."

Never mind where OP wants to go, this thread has sprouted legs and is travelling very far 😂.

By the way, OP said nothing about heritage or going to South Africa. She went there four years ago. She hasn’t said she wants to go back there.

Where in Africa?

Visiting South Africa (where you have gone previously) is very different to travelling to somewhere like the DRC - from a safety perspective.

That seems to be classified information. If she told us she’d have to kill us.

In fact, all the pesky details seem to be top secret 🕵️‍♂️.

None of these answers have ever been to Africa, except on some luxury safari....

You might get a better answer somewhere else.

I stayed in Soweto. Pearl clutching overload on here.

OP isn’t going to South Africa.

This is where the rubber hits the road in your family life going forward. If he misses the trip, if he fails to be anything but fully supportive it is her he is harming at a point in time when he should be accepting, and praising, and making her feel worthy for all parts of herself. That's his job as her father.

At 13, she is in the Ophelia time, a critically important time for adolescent girls as it is the time when they form their personality, or fail to do so. If they fail, it can result in slowly losing their identity and becoming submissive. His top down ultimatum is repressive at a point in time when it should be expansive. Africa is a perfect choice for her right now for her developing personality. It will not cause her to love him any less, but not letting her go will, and it will fester over time.

He is throwing a wedge between his daughter and himself, a wedge that will continue to grow as she grows older. He is actively threatening her full existence as a dual race person, but he does not, or refuses, to see it. That's a huge problem with regard to how he treats his own child.

The ancestral root heritage of her father is all around her. Yours is not. Whatever he thinks he's doing, what he's actually doing is calling her out as "less than" white. He's doing it to you, too, psychologically and systemically. It's a beat down. The message is half of her is not as good as the other half. And all of you, well, you get the idea.

He needs to get on the plane, get on the train, be 100,000% supportive, pleasant and loving. Anything less is harmful to her and truly potentially harmful to her long term.

Wow! I’m in Thailand right now and I’m black, no relation whatsoever here, are you saying I shouldn’t have gone?

OP is black British, I assume from the Caribbean who are descended from Africa… if there was any place she should visit it is Africa as that is the one continent as black people we are most culturally and historically linked to as opposed to going to Benidorm?!?!

The only reason you are saying this is only because it is Africa. Neither of them are Vietnamese or even Asian but husband wants to visit there but this is ok to you right?

I have a mixed race child and if his father ever told me I couldn’t take my son to Africa but he was cool with Vietnam all hell would break loose.

I have taken my son to my home country and culture every year since he was born (he is 16). I have brought him up bilingual, even when my husband only speaks English. If my husband had ever even tried to prevent me to bring up my child up in both our cultures and languages, let alone try to stop me from taking him away to my home country, we'd be divorced.

He sounds horrid. You will be better off divorced tbh.

I holiday separately from DH all the time. He’s more of a homebody and isn’t too fussed with travelling. Sometimes he will join but he doesn’t like long holidays and it really has to be somewhere that piques his interest (rare). Stuffed if I’m sitting at home as that’s his preference, but te has never begrudged me going away with it without the kids (now adults). If he did, we would have been divorced decades ago.

The ancestral root heritage of her father is all around her. Yours is not.

Perfectly encapsulated, @SparklyLeader. That's what all these strangely objecting PPs don't get - or refuse to acknowledge, perhaps.

Also, as @hoxtonbabe has more politely pointed out, replies focusing on OP's not having been born in Africa and lacking family links to any particular country are thoughtless at best. Racist and cruel at worst. Why? Because nearly every British-born black person has Caribbean great/grandparents. Every black Caribbean person descended from enslaved Africans.

The plantation owners took brutal measures to remove from their workers all knowledge of the tribes and locations from which their ancestors had been captured. When you belittle or sneer at OP's right to a cultural connection with Africa, the continent, because she has no direct link to a specific location, you're perpetuating that: telling her she has no African heritage.

You actually could stop your DH from going on holiday, by notifying authorities. Whilst you might not go to the extremes, this is about the OP who is saying her DH is threatening divorce over a holiday, so sounds like he could go to those extremes. The OP has asked in her own post if she should book the holiday anyways, I'm just highlighting to her that it's risky. If he threatens divorce over such a trivial thing (won't travel to Africa but suggests Vietnam!) who knows what else he would do.