Annoyed with DH

[Ilikechocolatealot]

I am off work all summer. DH working full time. Today he arrived home and goes to his workshop outside where he often catches up on phone calls. I was cooking dinner when he comes in to kitchen and I ask if he can pick up DS from football in 10 mins as I’m in the middle of doing dinner. He says he can’t as he has just smoked some weed. He offered to take over the cooking so I can go but I just got annoyed. The weed itself wasn’t the issue. He does smoke a bit from time to time as he says it helps with sleep and to calm anxiety. I don’t agree with it but he is a grown adult and can make his own decisions. I didn’t feel like explaining to him what needed doing for dinner (3 separate pots of things) It would just have been easier to finish it myself. I said it was unfair that I was just expected to pick up DS while he could just opt out. He said he didn’t know he’d be needed to do any driving and I hadn’t asked him and that he has been working all day and was only just in the door and needed something to unwind. I did do the pick up and as I ended up waiting in the car for longer than usual I texted him with instructions on dinner. I helped finish it off when I got back. I was still feeling pissed off and was a bit snappy with him.
He says I’m wrong to be annoyed and he did nothing wrong. AIBU?

So you started cooking food and planned in your mind that he was going to pick up your child but you didn't bother to communicate that to him. YABU. Is he meant to be psychic?

But for allowing someone to smoke drugs around your children, YABVU. Absolutely disgusting.

He is a druggie and this doesn't bother you so what on earth can we say to that?

On the basis you’re ok with the weed, let’s assume it’s the equivalent to someone coming home and having a beer or glass of wine to relax

its pretty much the same in that it would prevent them from picking up dc.

if my dh came home and started drinking to relax and automatically assumed I’d be the one to go out and collect dc. I’d be annoyed at the assumption this would fall to me

Here we have it in a nutshell op, I'll save you reading the next 30 pages.

You are (at least temporarily) a sahm - negative mumsnet points for you.

Your partner smokes weed - negative mumsnet points for him.

So far, it's a draw.

But you LET HIM smoke weed - game over, op

I think he should have checked first before smoking it. Why are you solely responsible for organising everything !!!

this is exactly what I was going to say.

I think it's just one of those evenings when communication would've been better at the start and then things clashed. I wouldn't think too much of it, just a mild annoyance. There's loads of them about when parenting and living busy lives! (Taking away the weed part).

He isn't opting out of parenting though, he was willing to cook dinner. I kinda feel like this is a reverse.

10mins notice after you knew he was out in his 'workshop' and came back into the kitchen you decide to ask.

Why wouldn't* you say when he got in, oh by the way I'm gonna need you cook dinner or go pick up ?

Just communicate.

Struggling to see why any of this is a big deal.

Does your DH not use alcohol or paracetamol??

🙄

Yanbu for the simple reason that he said this, He said he didn’t know he’d be needed to do any driving and I hadn’t asked him

If he's this incompetent at work then he can't be working very hard. He doesn't get to opt out of the mental load and he is expected to know his child's whereabouts and how they're getting home.

I would be more worried aboit the weed than picking up the child myself.

That’s very manipulative of him - to smoke the weed first before asking you, so that it was a fait accompli. He should have asked you before smoking it to make sure he didn’t have to do any driving.

I have a thing where I get annoyed at the situation rather than DH and this sounds like one of those. It’s not really anyone’s fault just a bit of lack of communication between the 2 of you, he could have asked if anything needed doing before he went and got smashed and you could have asked him to collect DS before he went and got smashed. Chalk it up to experience and you can both do something different next time.

No different to having a glass of wine when you get in. Weed is becoming widely accepted now and it’s only a matter of time before it’s legalised. I say that as someone who doesn’t smoke it

The amount of pearl-clutching over the word “weed” on this thread is honestly exhausting.

Some of you are talking about cannabis as though it’s automatically the same as being off your face on crack in the middle of Waitrose 😂

It’s a prescribed medication for thousands of people in the UK. Veterans. Cancer patients. People with chronic pain. Epilepsy. PTSD. MS. Anxiety disorders. Autism and many more conditions that other heavier medications are needed for an can be avoided by using a natural substance. People who’ve tried every conventional medication under the sun.

I’ve got legal, prescribed medical cannabis. It comes from a pharmacy. It’s quality controlled. I know exactly what’s in it. I use it in the same way someone else might use codeine or diazepam. It doesn’t turn me into a danger to society or a layabout. It lets me function.

If your issue is someone being impaired while looking after children, driving or working, then say that. That’s a completely reasonable discussion and it applies equally to alcohol, morphine, sleeping tablets and a whole list of prescription drugs.

But can we stop pretending that every mention of cannabis means someone is injecting heroin behind the bins?

The stigma is decades behind the evidence. Maybe put the pearls down for five minutes and have a read about medical cannabis before declaring anyone who uses it a “drug user.”

It’s just silly to pretend a guy smoking an illegal drug is the same as someone taking a prescribed medication where, as you said, it comes from a pharmacy and you know exactly what is in it. Nobody has said it’s the same as taking heroine that I’ve seen, but needing to smoke illegal drugs before you spend time with your wife and kid isn’t something that everyone would tolerate, and it isn’t the same as someone taking prescribed medication, so let’s not pretend that it is. It’s absolutely fine that OP doesn’t like her husband doing this.

Sorry but I think that for the actual issue here yabu.

He didnt abdicate his responsibility, he did as you did and assumed the other parent would be doing pick up.

And frankly if he has been working all day and you have "summer off" as you out it then you should be picking up the slack.

He offered to finish dinner, so you are just being a martyr over it.

He couldn't drive after a spliff?

Lightweight 😂

Me too.

I couldn’t get worked up about a bit of weed, unless it is a regular occurrence and to excess.

Communication always helps. OP could have told him beforehand that his chauffeur services would be required, but she forgot. He offered to finish cooking dinner.

No big deal.

I don’t think it’s “silly” at all, because that isn’t the point I made.

I’m not claiming that buying cannabis illegally is legally equivalent to having a prescription. They’re obviously different. The point is that legality and medical purpose are not the same thing.

We know nothing about why this man uses cannabis. Plenty of people self-medicate chronic pain, PTSD, anxiety and other conditions because NHS access to medical cannabis is exceptionally limited and private prescriptions are expensive. That doesn’t automatically make their reasons recreational.

If the concern is that he’s impaired while caring for his child, driving, or neglecting his responsibilities, then I completely agree that’s a problem. The same would be true if he was drinking heavily, misusing codeine, taking diazepam or any other substance that impaired him.

The issue there is impairment and behaviour, not the fact the substance happens to be cannabis.

And before anyone says “but it smells” lots of things smell. Cigarette smoke, alcohol on someone’s breath, strong perfume and agricultural much spreading smells. That’s an argument about consideration for other people, not about someone’s moral character.

Likewise, “think of the children” isn’t a trump card that ends the discussion. Children need sober, attentive, emotionally available parents. Whether someone meets that standard depends on how they behave, not on the label attached to a substance. A parent who has one prescribed diazepam, one glass of wine or one cannabis vape isn’t automatically a bad parent. Context matters.

What frustrates me is how quickly cannabis strips away all nuance. The moment the word appears, some people stop talking about behaviour and start talking about stereotypes. We don’t know this family. We don’t know his health. We don’t know the amount, the frequency or the effect it has on him.

So yes, OP is perfectly entitled to dislike it. She’s entitled to set whatever boundaries she wants in her marriage. But that’s a completely different discussion from implying that anyone who uses cannabis is irresponsible, morally suspect or “just a drug user”. Those attitudes are rooted far more in decades of stigma than in evidence

There’s nothing virtuous about being uninformed. Repeating decades-old stereotypes with confidence doesn’t make you well informed. it demonstrates how powerful stigma can be when it goes unchallenged.

I think best not embark on complicated time-sensitive dinner prep at the time Dc needs picking up
And if you do need him to pick up Dc, warn him in advance: he could have got held up at work , traffic or whatever.
It would have been better if he had said ‘oops, sorry…’ rather than bring defensive and criticising you.
And if you had said ‘yeah, sorry I should have mentioned it before you went Shed Mode’

Just messy irritable planning and communication all round

No way would I be okay with my husband smoking weed right before the kids are about to come home.

After they’ve gone to bed, maybe that’s a different conversation. But him coming home from work and smoking weed in his man cave while there are still things that need to be done? No way.

The fact that you even think this might be okay is shocking. It sounds like smoking weed is more important to him than considering your needs or your child’s needs.

Also, you deserve relaxation and calm time too. What would he say if he came home and you were in the kitchen cooking dinner while drinking a bottle of wine to “relax”? I doubt he would see it the same way.

OP said his reasons for using it in the OP. I didn’t say he’s a bad parent, I think their whole argument is a bit of a non issue, they just didn’t communicate. But smoking illegal drugs before tea time with the kids isn’t a boundary id be happy with. Personally on a random week day I don’t drink around my kids anyway, that’s just preference. But it being a drug used illegally is a little different in my opinion. You using it legally is not the same thing. Your first post implied you think it is, even if you have changed that a bit in your reply to me.