AIBU to change schools over my husband helping a neighbour?

[Schoolchanging]

Dh had always done school drop off and pick up due to my work hours and over the last 18 months I’d got increasingly irritated by him walking with or giving a lift to a neighbour whose child goes to the same school.

So I decided we would change dc to a different school a little further away and they are due to start there in a couple of weeks.

I didn’t want to spend time on discussions and boundaries and wanted to just eliminate the stress on our relationship. I told him I wasn’t comfortable that I’d asked him to stop and as he wasn’t I was changing schools to which he said ‘fine that’s your choice’. Dc are ok about it as we know people who go to the new school as well.

Neighbour has just spoken to us as we were leaving at the same time and she said to dh ‘back to the usual routine soon then!’ And I said ‘actually no, dc are going to be at a different school so all change for us !’ To which she turned to dh and said ‘why haven’t you told me this already?’ Which I found odd.

This is the maddest post I’ve ever read on here, and there is some very stiff competition
the car ‘care pack’ has really pushed me over the edge

Ok if you’d put the care pack in your OP maybe I would have voted differently. She is bonkers and I can understand the extreme reaction from you if she has done a lot of little things like that.

And yet how many times OP's on here are told "listen to your gut" when she feels a situation is "off"

This OP IS listening to it, and is told she is bonkers for trying to doo something about it

No, she's bonkers for putting it all on her kids!!

If she doesn't trust her husband not to pounce on the neighbour during the school run because she has a bit of lip balm, then she should ditch the husband. Not uproot the lives of innocent children.

School decisions are usually based on what's best for the children. People agonise over those decisions to try to get the right fit for their children.

You have made the decision on a whim based entirely on your own needs and insecurities.

Your behavior is bizarre.

Neighbour is still the neighbour though. And as a pp observantly pointed out, wouldn't her dh have told his neighbour he was no longer doing lifts if they were secretly seeing each other or wanting to?

As usual a drip feed. Why don’t OPs put relevant info in their initial post? 🤨

She's listening to it. She's probably right. But instead of dealing with it head on she's using her children as pawns in a game.

Listening to your gut is a bonkers strategy at the best of times, but even more so if it harms your children.

There are countless idiots around whose guts tell them not to get their children vaccinated. If I'd listened to my gut, I would have continued to ignore symptoms that presented recently. Fortunately I followed advice and went to my doctor, leading to effective treatment that stopped those symptoms and probably prevented cancer developing.

OP, you did the right thing, move your children to a better school, help your husband away from disturbance, able to spend more time with children on school run. You have asked your husband to change his behaviour and he didn't change, there is no way of asking that woman to change her behaviour if she is who you said she is. Going forward, maybe listen to your husband how he thinks of her? From your description, he doesn't seems interested in her. Is he a people pleaser?

You can listen to your gut and still behave in a rational way.

I don’t think I’ve ever read anything as crazy on here and there has been some crazy shit. I think if a neighbour has children at the same school as your own children, it would be hard to AVOID them on the school run. Of course he kept engaging with your neighbour after you told him (!) to stop. What was he supposed to do? Ignore her? That’s just weird. And I say this as someone who generally can’t be arsed with people for various reasons. I feel sorry for your children having to move schools because of your insecurities. You can big up the new school all you like but if it wasn’t for your husband being friendly with a mum on the school run, your children wouldn’t be moving. There was a dad who used to stand beside ‘my’ spot on the footpath when I was picking up my youngest and we would chat while we waited. We even walked back to the library together where our cars were parked. I wonder if his wife was suspicious?

Reading all the updates I don’t think YABU to not trust the neighbour and even the school
move being a better a school closer to your work etc however I do think this is a DH issue.

Why didn’t he stop communicating with her when you told him you felt uncomfortable with it? Why did he allow her to put her ‘care package’ in his car?

This is the weirdest and most dramatic reaction ever. Dragging your poor children from their school and moving them away from friends to prevent your husband speaking to another woman. Could you just not have asked him to stop the lifts if they were that problematic to you. Your poor kids.

To clarify: she keeps her own toiletry bag with lip balm, etc in your DH’s car? For a short school run?

It’s not odd

she was probably not realised she’d have to mar her own way to school. Maybe she was betting in that.

you say you didn’t change schools for that but you literally said that in your op! Then changed your mind when everyone tore you down.

you have a husband problem. Not an neighbour problem

I am baffled by how many people think that asking him not to talk to her was a reasonable ask in the first place. It would be so weird and awkward to suddenly not talk to someone that you see every day and used to regularly chat to and share lifts with.

Earlier this year I went to a sporting event abroad and we ended up sat next to another British couple. The guy was in the seat next to me and made some chit chat about the sport, “did you come far”, “have you been before”, “who are you supporting” sort of thing. His girlfriend then had a weird whispered argument with him about talking to a stranger instead of her and sulked for the rest of the event. It was really odd behaviour.

Clearly some people think this level of control is normal behaviour. There was someone earlier saying that you should pick men who don’t talk to women at all. Wtf?!

She did. But he didn’t stop…

she had a husband problem. That’s the thing. It’s not the neighbour. It’s the boundary with the husband

Now that’s strange.

I’m going to go against the flow here, based on experience, and say trust your instinct about this neighbour and don’t let others tell you that you are nuts. She may or may not succeed in wrecking your marriage but you have made a step towards future-proofing the school arrangements at least. And tell her to f**k off at the next available opportunity.

Could you just not have asked him to stop the lifts if they were that problematic to you.

She did tell him to stop he didn't. Probably because he already knows how absolutely batshit his wife is. He probably wants a tiny bit of autonomy over his own life.

I think the "nuts" opinions are about her willingness to fuck around with her children's lives based on an imagined attachment that can go on just as well without the school drop-offs.

It's absolutely not normal to put 'care packages' in someone else's car. She's like a dog, pissing up your garden fence to mark her territory. Get her fucking make up and shit out of the car and lob it into her front garden - cheeky mare!

You need to do something about your husband though. Why is he allowing her to fawn all over him ? Where is his loyalty? He is your main problem here OP. I think you are right to take steps to move her out of your day to day lives but at the same time you need to deal with why your h hadn't had your back.

Fair enough... and we always say on here to women trust your instincts, and to be dismissed by her like this is rude and yeah, not good.

It probably is a husband problem though. Any woman could throw themselves at your husband but it's down to trust. If you trust him or not, rather than the other woman.

I don't think OP would have moved her kids to a worse school - she's moved them to somewhere which has advantages over the current school and if things do go pear shaped with the husband, enables her to do the school run and have wraparound care. That's not bonkers.
OP has said that her Dh has loads of friends and hobbies that she takes no issue with and that it is only this one woman who is a problem. I'm not seeing why the h wouldn't respect her views on that and I'm thinking he enjoys lapping up all this woman's attention. But it's coming at the expense of loyalty to his wife.

Women are told to listen to their intuition and this neighbour is displaying odd behaviour - I reckon practically every wife on this thread would take issue with another woman gazing adoringly at their dh and leaving their stuff in his car.

The update on the care bag in his car is overstepping. I still don’t think moving schools and disrupting your children is the right way and he could in theory go out with her regardless of a school run.
your DH needs to understand where you are coming from and act like an adult not have children’s lives disrupted because he won’t say no to a woman whose behaving weirdly