AIBU? Missed the immediate aftermath of FIL’s death for a work event and now whole family is freezing me out

[jooooosh]

Need some perspective here because I am currently sleeping in the spare room and nobody in my family will talk to me.

I'm 44M and my wife is 44F. We've been together since we were teenagers, married for many years, and have three kids. We're very close to each other's families. My in laws have basically known me since I was a kid, so they’ve always treated me like family.

About three weeks ago, I had to travel from Madrid to Los Angeles for a very important work project. There was a huge amount of money involved and some very wealthy clients, so I had several meetings and events that had been planned well in advance. Honestly, their lifestyle isn't really my thing, but professionally I had to be involved.

When I left Madrid, my wife and kids were on holiday in Mallorca. Everything was completely fine between us.

About a week into my trip, my father in law suddenly became seriously ill and was admitted to the ICU. My wife called me repeatedly that night, along with my kids. I normally keep my phone on silent when I’m sleeping, so I didn't see the calls immediately.

When I called my wife back at morning, she was crying and told me what had happened. She asked me to come home

I immediately started looking for flights. The problem was that I had several important commitments over the next 3–4 days, including a major event hosted by one of our clients and a call with people from another company that I genuinely needed to attend. I told my wife I would come back as soon as I could.

Unfortunately, my father in law died that afternoon.

I started looking for flights again, but there weren't any suitable flights available for the next couple of days. I eventually booked the earliest flight I could get.

And this is where I completely screwed up.
That night, I still went to the client's party.
It was a big LA type event, I stayed late, and honestly, looking back, I understand how terrible that looks. My wife found out where I had been through a friend.

The next morning she was furious. She told me that while her father had just died, I was out partying in Los Angeles.

I tried explaining that the event had already been planned, that I was trying to get home, and that I had already booked my flight. But I realize now that none of that probably mattered to her in that moment.

I ended up changing my plans again, flew LA to London to Madrid, and arrived the following day.

By the time I got there, my wife, kids, mother in law and the rest of the family were already in another city preparing for the funeral.
When I arrived, nobody really spoke to me.
My wife wouldn't look at me. My mother in law was extremely cold toward me. Her brother and sister also barely acknowledged me.

Funeral happened, and I felt completely sidelined. It has now been six days. My wife has barely spoken to me. one time she did, she was extremely angry. I'm currently sleeping in another room.

I know I made a terrible decision by going to that party. I should probably have stayed in my hotel, even if I couldn't get an earlier flight. I can understand why seeing pictures or hearing that I was at a party while her father had just died would feel absolutely awful.

But at the same time, I genuinely was trying to get home. I wasn't choosing a party over my father in law's funeral. I was dealing with a work commitment, couldn't immediately get a flight, and had already booked the earliest one I could find.

My in laws and I have always been extremely close. I've known them for decades, and I've never treated them like they're just my wife's family. I loved my father in law too.

So I'm struggling with this.

Did I really deserve to be completely shut out and treated like I don't exist for six days?

If you’re the breadwinner then work comes first. Mortgage still need to be paid, kids clothed and food put on the table.

That probably sounds harsh but c’est la vie. When my parents died my husband drove me home and was able to stay 48 hours and then back to work. We’ve been through redundancy twice in the last decade. That was really hard to come through and there’s no way I was risking his job so he could sit and hold my hand.

I don’t really understand how you could possibly feel like going to a party when a close family member had died.

Have you taken your wife in your arms and sincerely apologised to her, and shown remorse, or have you simply attempted to justify yourself?

I think however the fact that you could even consider attending a party having had this news is the problem because it indicates a fundamentally cold person lacking in finer feelings.

It isn’t that you “shouldn’t” have. The problem is that you “could” ie were even able to.

But if your husband was upset and asked you to come home, you would have come home for him, right?

I'd say you messed up big time. But I don't know enough about your work to know for sure. What would have been the reprecussions if you'd left the existing commitments?

The thing that really bothered me is that you put your phone on silent when you sleep - so your wife could never get hold of you in an emergency????

I wouldn't put my phone on silent if I was a continent away from my children. What if something had happened to one of his kids? He sounds like someone that prioritises work over family and he has now probably ruined his relationships with his wife and in-laws and possibly his children.

If someone I love died, I could not face attending a party. I would be devastated. They are upset that you clearly didn’t feel this level of emotional pain. It’s hard to come back from.

You couldn’t find a suitable flight from Los Angeles? Ha, pull the other one.

And for the phone on silent thing, set your phone up properly. The default on my iPhone is that contacts calling back to back will override the nighttime silent mode because it’s assumed to be urgent. You can also set it to allow specific contacts to ring through or any number of other options. Being married with children and choosing to be fully uncontactable is a bizarre choice.

Its very passive agressive and childish to ignore you. You were trying to get home.

I do but only for my elderly mother and my dh who is on a different continent. For those 2 I'm contactable 24 hours a day

I agree with this. Plus I imagine it’s misplaced anger because of the grief - you’re an easy target unfortunately as whilst I agree with the PP, I have huge sympathy for your wife & agree that she’s right to be annoyed with you to an extent but it’s manifesting itself in the extreme.

Did you really try to get a flight back? I'm struggling to believe that you couldn't have got an indirect flight via another European city or got to another US city for a flight to Madrid.

If you really couldn't, then there was no point in missing the client events, including the party.

My dh used to travel for work a lot during many years. He kept his phone on silence during night, but not our numbers. They would go through, in case of emergency.

How do you do this as I’m married with kids but phone is silent during sleeping hours?

I wouldn't have expected you to cancel everything and fly home. She is projecting her grief onto the wrong person. It's not your fault it happened.

Unless you were so upset about your close FIL’s sudden death that you just couldn’t manage it.

It was a very important client and I needed to be there it was pre planned.

I completely understand how it might look to her, like I was out partying while her dad had passed away. Honestly, I was sad, and I only went because of my work obligations

Since I had already booked my flight for that afternoon, there was really nothing else

Next morning, I changed my plan. I booked a flight to London, then another from London to Madrid. Taking two different flights to reach home followed by a 150 mile drive l made for an exhausting long journey

I was literally on another continent

If you go to settings, calls and notifications then do not disturb it will allow you to add exceptions to the rule.

As another poster has said, there are hugely differing opinions on this thread. But my perception is that one of the differences is 'people who have done a lot of work travel' vs 'people who haven't'.

First of all, that word 'suitable' is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Anyone who has travelled a lot knows that there would've been some kind of flight home from LAX of all places, one of the largest hub airports in the world!, even if it wasn't the travel class or route you wanted, pretty much immediately. You only started to compromise on the flight and route you took after you had (as a PP put it) an 'oh shit' moment. This was a major mistake. No doubt you took a calculation on how you could 'get away with' balancing off the work commitments with the family commitments and get home 'soon enough' whilst 'doing enough' but that calculation has very much not paid off and now you refuse to own it.

It is at times of crisis that you really know who your friends are - a cliche, but it's true. And you learn a lot about anyone close to you. What your wife has learned is that at what was presumably one of the worst, or possibly the absolute worst, time of her life, you were not there, and you didn't make much effort to change that.

If it had been me, I'd have dropped the work commitments in a heartbeat regardless of how much money was at stake, and gone home - even if at my own expense and in cattle class. And I'd have made it clear to all concerned why I was doing it, and I'd hope that all - or at least, most - of them would've understood. In multi-company, multi party, multimillion $ transactions I've had people do this in similar circumstances and never thought anything other than 'oh well'. If you're so critical to the whole thing that even in an extreme circumstance like this the world couldn't adjust around you, then you've all been managing things very badly indeed. There are all sorts of ways you could mitigate the impact.

You made bad decisions, likely aided by the fact the work commitments were closer to you and hence loomed larger in your mind. In itself, this should tell you something. So yes, YABU... and you need to do all you can to make amends and hope to God they're feeling forgiving. The key for me here is not that you had your phone off, but that you had the chance to drop everything and come back immediately and you didn't. That simply tells your wife and kids, and all the wider family, where your priorities lie.

You mention nothing about a genuine risk of you being sacked if you had done this, and I think that speaks volumes. It would be a very rare job indeed where there is that much at stake and you're in a senior enough role to be doing this and you're going to get sacked in this scenario. Only if there really was a credible risk of actually being sacked - not your reputation being mildly tarnished for a few unreasonable people but actually sacked - would I think the way you behaved was reasonable. I'm nearly certain this isn't the case, because if it was, this is what you'd have been mentioning in your defence, not going on about how much you loved your FIL even though your actions clearly demonstrate otherwise.

Oh. and as for the partying - IF you'd booked the first flight out of there - the REAL first flight - and gone to a work event in the meantime, even if involved boozing - not a great look, but OK. But you didn't, did you?

I completely understand how it might look to her, like I was out partying while her dad had passed away. Honestly, I was sad, and I only went because of my work obligations

Were you required to "stay late"?

Oh. and as for the partying - IF you'd booked the first flight out of there - the REAL first flight - and gone to a work event in the meantime, even if involved boozing - not a great look, but OK. But you didn't, did you?

Yeah, this.

Amazing, thank you. I didn’t know that was even a thing!

He had already died. What could OP do? His wife was with her family and being supported. Years ago my SIL 18 month old died. We weee in Australia. We didn’t fly home as there was nothing we could do

I'd like an answer to the question 'what would work have done/said if you told them you had to go home?'

I would not have my phone on silent 'to sleep' if I was travelling away from my husband and kids, no.

And, in addition, you went to a party that was optional. My FIL died recently. I've not known him since I was a child, but though the world of him. No way would I have wanted to go to a party.

You don't seem to be grieving at all. Perhaps that is why you're being shunned; the, rest of the familybare wondering who this alien in their midst is.

My DH wouldn't have done that, because we share similar attitudes to death, grief and the extent to which we "belong" to each other's family.

The problem for the OP isn't that one of them is actually right, there's no objectively right answer in this situation. The problem is that they have different views.