AIBU for shouting after being locked out with my sick child?

[Kittenwatch]

How often have you really shouted/lost your temper at your partner/spouse?

I’ve been with my DH for over 20 years. We generally have a calm relationship. Neither of us are perfect obviously but we generally divide stuff up fairly well. We’ve probably only had 2/3 serious blow-ups in that time.

They all stem from his shit memory.

Today I screamed at him like I’ve never before. He was in the wrong but people still shouldn’t be shouted at. I was so angry and still am. I’m not sure what’s next.

He’s wfh today. I was called to collect our youngest son from school. I told him and he acknowledged the message - he’s interviewing all day so had limited opportunities to communicate which I get.

I arrived back home to the chain on the door. For no fucking reason. I rang the door, messaged and called him. Nothing (and I can see he didn’t read the messages). I drove around for 30 ish mins with windows down because I couldn’t sit on the drive in the car with sick DS and my neighbour wasn’t home.

After half an hour my neighbour returned home and very kindly yanked up her fence so I could climb under and get in.

So we’re in and he came down after his meeting finished oblivious and I screamed at him that he was stupid and to go away.

He’s upstairs interviewing again. I’m calmer but still angry.

Points to note:

DS is autistic with high support needs - he’s 8 but intellectually more like a 2/3 year old. He’s non verbal and cannot communicate how he feels. I collected him because he’d been sick at school.

I have a mobility issue. Getting under the fence was a significant challenge.

There is zero reason for the chain to be on.

I had messaged him repeatedly and called him too. Even if he couldn’t answer I think that a phone repeatedly buzzing when you know your wife was collecting your sick child warrants at least a glance.

I don’t even know what my AIBU is. I’m angry with him and disappointed in myself for losing my rag.

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Hope you are feing ok.
When you get very angry and upset it leaves your immune system very exposed for several hours. Deep brrathing can help.
It also leaves me absolutely shattered.

Ignore them. You had a right to be raging. NOT because your partner was, apparently, wanking (WTF) but because he was thoughtless.

Hopefully he's learned his lesson.

He was interviewing. Presumably he put the chain on the door to mitigate against anybody disturbing him in the interview process.

Agree with this.

100% reasonable. I hope he was very very sorry.

Do people honestly just rock into a 10-page thread and not bother to read any of it?

@DemiVie @Differentforgirls

At least read my bloody posts.

I agree. I would also be livid and would have lost my temper but you can’t go round shouting at you DP. And I’m not judging harshly (especially as you have said you apologised) as this is from someone who raised my voice at my wife (both women) the other week (didn’t scream at her but was deffo raising my voice in frustration) and even though I think she was in the wrong, the first thing I did was apologise for shouting as it’s never acceptable. Even if they’ve done something awful or stupid.

He was extremely sorry and is continuing to apologise. As I said in an earlier post i apologised for the unacceptable shouting but he felt he ‘deserved’ it (he didn’t’ and has agreed he needs to stop acting like he can be cocooned by work.

We both have ‘good jobs’ but not ‘big jobs’ - middle management with the ability to have some flexibility which is what we have valued with our boys.

He absolutely could have said ‘goodness - I’ve accidentally locked my wife out - please excuse me’ if he’d glanced at his phone. It would’ve taken 20 seconds max.

The irony of this all is that if I’d thought to email him it would’ve popped up on his screen immediately but it didn’t occur to me.

What? 🤣🤣🤣🤣Don’t be so ridiculous

YANBU. You’re only human, you had to drive around with a sick child when the current weather is resembling an oven, I’d of absolutely blown up as well, probably more than you did!

That's all good! Sounds like you both care for each other very much. Don't worry about the shouting anymore. You had good reason and your DH understood immediately. He didn't leap to the defensive, he straight away saw that you were upset and how hard it had been for you and DS. Fine to have some residual anger, but I think you are both all good.

My neighbour (who is getting a fantastic bunch of flowers btw) said she had expected to hear a proper argument.

The thing is DH and I genuinely don’t fight - both have always talked things through so after the three shouts we were done.

This really reminds me of my husband! He has locked me out the house with the chain a few times. We have a young child so putting the chain on is habit as he can't reach it, when I go out and he shuts the door he puts it on automatically unless I tell him not to lock me out which I have made a point of doing!

Still drives me up the wall when I'm ringing the doorbell, calling his phone, calling the work number, emailing him on his work email just to try and get his attention so he'll let me and our son back in while our 3 year old loses his mind in the back of the car thinking we'll never get back in the house. We also suspect he has ADHD and he very much locks in with work so even though he works from home it can be hard to actually contact him. I do worry that if there was ever an emergency that I wouldn't be able to get his attention as he pays almost no attention to messages or calls unless they are work related.

YANBU

I should have asked to see but couldn't resist it. I thought there was only three, but THEN THERE WERE FOUR!!!

Here's a pic of our ragdoll's hands as a gesture of my appreciation

Thank you everyone for the support.

To just give a bit of colour as it seems some people think I was out of control the argument went like this:

Me: (hearing him come down the stairs) GO AWAY - GO BACK UPSTAIRS

Him: What?! What’s the matter?!

Me: Why the fuck didn’t you answer the phone? You locked me out!! WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU SO STUPID?? (this is not acceptable in my opinion)

Him: (checked phone and realised) OMG I’m so sorry-

Me: GO AWAY ( I was crying by this point and this was screamed)

As an addendum my son found this hilarious. Probably because he has literally never seen it and thought ‘loud mummy!’ as we do play very loud games a lot. I was very worried I’d scared him but I looked over and he was jumping and laughing so thankfully no harm to him.

How can you share PAWS but no FACE?! I demand cats!!

And in return you can see my beautiful Toastie

We do - I love him very much. He’s got a shit memory but I made a decision to deal with it as his MANY good qualities outweigh this.

Cats make everything better! Toastie is adorable (and has a fantastic name).

Heeeeere's Molly. She knows she's gorgeous

Oh goodness, @ThatMintMember, that sounds bloody annoying.

He needs to come up with a solution, like a chain with a key override that works from outside, a speaker system, anything.

It sounds like you're understandably very tired and stressed. The issue seems to be that your DH can forget things - randomly put on the chain and walk off, not look at his phone, fail to download the doorbell app - and you absolutely can't forget anything. Even if he is great, I can see how an incident like this, where you had to leave work in the middle of a busy day and he couldn't even answer the door, would send you right over the edge.

You shouldn't have shouted but I think your anger comes from a legitimate place and it may be time to speak about him taking more responsibility for things.

@ChrisTheBastard that is a STUNNING cat 😲 If I looked like that I’d be a total twat!

@ThatMintMember it’s infuriating isn’t it? I honestly have not been so angry in about 18 years.

@Whyarepeople we have had a conversation and he knows he needs to do better. We’re nearly at the end of term which makes things a bit easier and hopefully after our holiday we’ll be able to reassess.

He was interviewing and did not want to be disturbed.

Did you also not feel the need to read even a tiny bit of the TEN PAGE thread?