Am I being unreasonable? Dad to be...please help

[simba86]

My wife and I, married for 3 years, together for 10, in our late 20s are expecting our first child at the end of May.

My wife has never really got on with my parents, particularly my mum, and whilst they live 2 hours away we see them ever couple of months.

I am obviously very excited about becoming a dad. I love my wife more than anyone in the world and so much looking forward to having our own family. I am also looking forward to being a proud dad and introducing our baby to my parents shortly after the birth, when everything has calmed down and my wife is well enough to see not visitors, but our immediate family.

However because of the break down in the relationship between my wife and my parents, my wife does not want me to let them know if she goes into labour, so that they are not hanging around the hospital or nearby, nor does she want them to visit after the birth until she is ready, which she has indicated could be many hours after the birth, or when we go home, or even a week or so after the birth. She is so stressed out about this she has driven off tonight after writing me a letter saying she doesnt want me at the birth, nor does she want me to be her husband.

I can assure you I have been as supportive of her and her family over the past 10 years more than most people could ever imagine, and as someone who has a rare medical condition with no known cure and an uncertain future, an only child, I don't want to miss out on a special moment for me.

I dont want my parents hanging around or interfering and have made that clear to my wife, I just want to share a moment with my parents, my wife and our baby shortly after they are born when my wife ia well enough.

Surely this isn't me being unreasonable....or is it?

Please share your opinion on this

Dh phoned his parents for support when I was in labour with ds1, and it had gone past the 24 hour mark. He was sent home for a rest and rang his parents. He didn't clear this with me, but as far as I am concerned, there's nothing wrong with an adult reaching out for support from people who love him, if he's going through something stressful.

I am not saying that 'simba's' stress is greater, or his needs more important than his wife's, but he was stressed and needed some support, and clearly thought it was better to ask for that from his parents than to put extra pressure on his wife. Now he knows this was wrong.

As a general rule, though, is it so wrong for an adult to still need and want support from their parents sometimes? I look to my mum for support sometimes, and so does dh, from his - I hadn't realised this was so wrong.

You sound lovely and I realise this ship has sailed but I don't think your being totally unreasonable. Your parents are the babies GP as much as her parents are. I get she wants her mum to support her but what about you? You are supporting your wife but who supports you?

My ILs did my head in but I allowed them to visit in hospital as well. I just said I was tired and allowed DP to deal with them and baby whilst I slept.

I wouldn't say OP sounds "lovely" at all - but whether in reality he's lovely, or controlling and domineering (as he sounds to me) is neither here nor there.

The fact is his wife can refuse to have him at the birth, and refuse any visitors in the hospital - as she is the patient, this is entirely up to her.

This looks increasingly like the route she's going to take because of simba's behaviour towards to her, regarding his parents.

Simba, if she really has been physically abusive to you - which you have drip fed onto the thread 900 posts in - then you shouldn't be in a relationship with her. Particularly as she's your primary carer (I think).

If she has been abusive to you, I agree, you have to consider ending the relationship both for your sake and the sake of the baby. It might be helpful to know some specifics here, but if you yourself feel that you have been abused in some way then that is enough to make it serious.

(Though I must admit it is tempting to wonder if this is a case of drip feeding 'to suit your argument'.)

Arising from all of your previous posts and also this one you have massive boundary issues that need to be addressed in therapy I have already suggested therapy upthread and I urge you to consider it. If you decide to keep this relationship going, you must work on your boundaries. Boundaries work both ways of course -- teaching others how to treat you and also seeing and understanding how you treat others.

Basically what I see in your last post is you complaining about your wife doing to you pretty much exactly what you have done to her. What I also see is that you are aware of the tit for tat thing you have going on, and continued insistence that you are right.

You ask a lot of questions:
Should your wife have discussed your upcoming operation with her mother?
Yes unless you had told her not to.
Did you tell her not to?
If you expressed no preference one way or the other then what your wife did was ok. What you did when you called your parents was guaranteed to bring her wrath down on you because you know how she feels about your parents having anything to do with her pregnancy issues including childbirth.

And how was I trying to draw attention to me by calling my own parents about something I was worried about? I didnt demand anything of my wife because of my conversation with them...and wouldnt it be unusual for your ils not to offer their support in a situation where they could help?
The issue was a non-event. The matter had been cleared up. You had been reassured by the medical staff that nothing was wrong and you could rest easy.
Given that upthread you intended to get the doctors to decide over your wife's head whether she was ready to see visitors or not, you yourself should have been ready to accept what the medical staff said about her condition that night, right?

Or alternatively, my reading of your posts on the subject suggests there was still a question mark hanging over the whole thing as the doctor hadn't yet signed off on the tests. So you can guarantee that if you needed support from your parents just in case the doctor wasn't satisfied with the tests, what was your wife doing on her own waiting for the doctor? Could it be that she was anxious at that moment too, waiting for the doctor?

I'm not buying it Simba.
Either way you look at it, you did the wrong thing here.
You cannot:
(1) claim to look for support after the fact when you have already stated that the word of medical staff should be good enough for your wife and she needs to just suck it up and act accordingly,
OR
(2) leave your wife while the whole thing is still up in the air to get support for you.

I am left to conclude that you get anxious when attention is not focused on you.

And when you mentioned how helpful your parents had offered to be to your wife, yes you were in fact reassuring her that they are nice people -- with the subtext that she has no right to have something up her nose against them. Just as she keeps on trying to persuade you that the spare room should be done up with the money you have been given. Though on this point, I note you and she were house-hunting the day she ended up in the hospital.

(I also note - duh - that your wife is pregnant and perhaps it wouldn't strike you, but you should know that the instinct to 'nest' is strong in pregnant women; 'to nest' means to make the current home as nice as can be, not to find a new nest, pack, move, unpack, work out problems in a new house, and all while pregnant or recovering and caring for a newborn, and also caring for a husband who may or may not be able to physically help much with all the packing and moving.)

And the issue with her rude and ignorant Granny --
You chose to get past it. (And well done. It was a horrible thing to say).
This does not mean your wife is obliged to get past offensive things your mother has said to her or respect or be friendly with someone she would not associate with except for her relationship with you. (You have asserted it is a clash of personalities and also said things have been said tactlessly by your mum so I am assuming it is a bit of both).

You are keeping a running score here Simba. This is passive aggressive behaviour.

The relationship sounds more like trench warfare than a marriage with a future to me. You have both dug in and will fight to the death. How long the misery goes on will depend on how invested you are in being 'right'. At the moment, you are 100% invested.

(And again, I do not understand how you, suffering with muscle weakness that necessitates at least a partial carer role from your wife, and anticipating an operation in the future, will be able to take on the role of SAHD responsible for a baby's care full time.)

OMG this marriage is a car crash.

She's physically hurt you? By accident or deliberately? If deliberately then she's abusive but the way to deal with abusers is not to abuse them back, it's to either a) get them to stop abusing or b) get the hell out of the relationship.

Playing tit for tat is a deeply unhealthy, dysfunctional approach to dealing with someone you feel is doing you wrong. It reminds me of those women who use their husband's toothbrush to clean the loo and then put it back in the glass. Terribly sad.

Simba trying to lay the law down while your wife is vulnerable, is not the way to deal with her abusiveness if she is abusive. Please book that counsellor.

Every other poster who has said you need to find a way to get out of the relationship if your wife is hurting you. Though I understand this can be more difficult than people realise and must be even more so if you are I'll. I do hope you have confided in your parents about the physical abuse you are suffering, letting other people know can be the start of beng able to leave. For sure THESE are the kinds of things you SHOULD be sharing with your parents.

However, regarding the seva little things your mother has done to upset your wife over time... One big sudden distressing event or action by another person can often be easier to get over and forgive. If your mother has consistently, over a long period of time, been doing or saying things to deeply upset your wife then I imagine it must be very hard for her to forgive. Someone who cares about her would have made attempts t stop that behaviour the first time they were aware it was upsetting.

Why is it, do you think, that your mother continues to do these things? And can you not at least see how your wife would need your emotional support over all that time?

Has her grandma made a habit of saying rude and offensive things about your illness or is this the first time? How easy would you find it to be in her company if she was like that every time she saw you?

Sorry, I meant 'I agree with every ther poster who has said...'

Well, we've certainly given the OP something he is very familiar with - an incessant tirade of women arguing with and about him. Perhaps he keeps coming back because he feels so at home!

No, I know, it's because he is driven by a compulsion to justify himself and tell us again and again that he's right actually, for one spurious, contrived, tangential, bizarre, risible or repetitive reason after another. We've really strung this out, because we don't have to sit in a room with him.

OP, when people agree with you in real life, it's not because they think you're right, it's because they want you to shut up. My lasting impression is that you are just sooooo incredibly tedious.

In fact you're such a selective yet random, emotionally absent, self-justification robot that thoughts of the Turing test do come to mind...

I've met one or two people in real life like you - that is, they feel compelled to declare themselves right about everything. That's not the same as being right, or even being seen to be right. It doesn't matter how absurd others consider them or their behaviour, so long as they can make an unapologetic, often injured, declaration of rightness and behave as if they've had the last word (because they then stop listening). It goes with not comprehending the idea of people disagreeing - they just haven't understood you correctly yet - and with relentlessly wearing people down, until they just nod along or even stop questioning what you say, as it's actually easier to accept it at face value than bother to try to untangle truth from contrivance.

Declaring themselves right becomes the sole objective of these people's discourse, to the extent that they stop thinking as soon as they arrive at a point of declaration, so actually befuddle themselves with their own selective fact-gathering, crazy conflations, twisted logic and limited interrogation of the evidence, start to believe their own inventions and can then only remember whatever contrivance they'd arrived at, not the source material, so disabling their ability to consider alternative interpretations.

This I think is the nub of what I've read here. You've lost, or never gained, any facility for critical thinking. You're not capable of exploring an issue with an open mind or from different angles, or examining evidence dispassionately, because your brain is in automatic sift and select mode, hunting nuggets that when placed next to each other, could possibly be dressed up as a point in your favour, however obvious it is to everyone else that they don't provide one.

One recent, rather stunningly silly example, amongst so many: you went to an NCT class where the father's role in the birth was discussed. You were told (on the premise that a woman with her partner at an NCT class was unlikely to be one who'd want him barred from the delivery room) that you could choose whether or not to be in the delivery room and whether to cut the cord. Neither of these is a decision about the baby. The cord is going to be cut regardless. Letting you do it is exactly like letting a child 'help' by stirring a cake mixture. You then declared 'fathers have choices to make about the baby, like cutting the cord, everyone at my NCT class agrees with this and some people on this thread, that means I just happen to be in a minority on this thread but am not in real life, in believing I should have an equal say about everything that happens to the baby.' Talk about grasping at straws!

When I read that, my first thought was 'is he really that stupid, or does he really believe that we are that stupid?'. Or... are you so utterly fixed in the condition of assessing every life experience through the filter of 'evidence for me being right' that you've lost any critical faculties you once had? So all you heard was 'father makes choice, yes of course' and you simply cut that out and pasted it into a discussion about whether you have equal rights to decision-making over every aspect of your baby's life and, into one about whether you could justify imposing your preferences concerning your relationship upon your wife, after ten years and at the point she's feeling at her most trapped and vulnerable.

Before you're able to get anything out of this discussion at all, you need to develop some basic skills in active reading and listening, then in structuring discussions, assessing evidence and being able to explore and present an argument from both sides. Just as we all did at school. You don't do well or persuade anybody, at school or in life, by saying 'I think this, here's a scattering of points that have something to do with my declaration - though not necessarily much and I can't credibly link them, I'll just waffle a bit and hope you don't notice - and so, I'm right'.

You have a wealth of material available to you in this thread. It's up to you if you squander it on the big rubbish heap of 'doesn't agree with me', or if you're able to read, consider, reflect, organise, analyse and understand something of what is actually there. Totally up to you.

Terrific observations there.

(And I think a lot about that NCT class was misinterpreted by Simba.)

Your wife has physically hurt you ? And you throw in this information 900 posts in, among a lot of other stuff?

So has she been deliberately physically abusive? If so then you need to take action because that would be a pretty major accusation. Have you contacted the police? Have you taken steps to safeguard the baby?

Or is it the case that some of the care she provides is, by its nature, physically uncomfortable but unavoidable?

I would not disbelieve anybody who believes themselves to be a victim of abuse, so if that's what is happening then you need to report it to the police, so that action can be taken by social services to protect you and the baby.

However, I have to admit I find it very strange that you seem to consider the importance of this on a par with decorating issues and less important than NCT discussions about cord cutting.

Simba - the main thing to bear in mind here is that at this stage of your wife's pregnancy it is very important that you put your own issues on the back burner and do everything you can to reassure her that she is your priority. Concentrate on that now.

Take the focus off yourself for now and do everything in your power to make her know you are now going to put her needs first. Above everyone else.

She is doing a very important job, carrying that baby, and you should be aiming to make her feel cherished and safe and secure. Try and be unselfish and put her needs first. Then things will go more smoothly. Does this feel like a realistic course of action?

Simba you haven't come back since your comments about "hurt me physically" and "incredibly dangerous situations". They change things dramatically, you shouldn't be planning how to be present at the birth but considering how to safeguard your child. That is likely to require the involvement of external services and divorce, for which I suspect you will require a lot of support from your parents.

Have you told them about these incidents? Will they support you and LO if it comes to leaving your DW?

Oh lord.

Like others, I am now wondering whether Simba's original post was a final-straw sort of cry for help in a relationship where his partner genuinely is so frequently unreasonable that he had no idea that this time, she was being perfectly justified in her request.

Or not.

Certainly at least one of the parties here seems to have some quite deep-seated problems.

Simba, how, why and when did she 'hurt you physically'? What are the 'dangerous situations'? What do you mean by 'irrational' (erratic? dangerous? illegal?) driving?

Simba, based on the total of ALL of your posts your marriage appears to be in deep, deep trouble. Either because you are extremely self-centered and lack all empathy OR because your wife is unstable and abusive. Either way, it looks to me as if you need to separate, either for your own safety or for your wife's well-being.

You and your wife need to seek immediate mental health counseling. I'm not saying that either of you is 'crazy', just that you are both in over your heads in a bad situation & need help to get out and gain peace & perspective. Looks to me as if one or both of you are in a MH crisis and there is an unborn child that MUST be protected.

I'm somewhat confused. On the one hand I'm to understand that this man is potentially the victim of domestic abuse, on the other hand that (having borne years? of abuse by his controlling and domineering wife) he's been discussing his 'rights' to show off his baby as soon as the doctors agree that his wife has no medical reason to prevent him wheeling in the visitors. Umm?

Either this is a man who is cowed by his wife's appallingly unreasonable and 'dangerous' behaviour over the years, or this is a man who uses strategies of coercive control to get his demands met. I'm struggling to buy that he is in both situations.

"Simba, based on the total of ALL of your posts your marriage appears to be in deep, deep trouble. Either because you are extremely self-centered and lack all empathy OR because your wife is unstable and abusive."

Well, the two aren't mutually exclusive. Dysfunctional people often attract each other. I do think Simba is an unreliable narrator though, as was observed many posts ago by other posters.

Hmm, he cannot stop himself from telling his mother about every aspect of his (and his wife's) life and his mother 'cares deeply' for his wife and tries to be nice to her, just phrases things badly sometimes.

Don't we think that if his wife was physically abusing and endangering him, he might have mentioned it to his mother, who would then have reason to dislike and distrust his wife - which would have been mentioned waaay back and is actually directly contradicted by what he's said about the wife / mother relationship?

Yeah maybe the wife is alternately tantrumming and vindictive and he self-pitying and manipulatively self-righteous. Maybe their relationship is more twisted and troubled than we can imagine. Quite possible but I don't get that from the very non-specific 'hurt and endangered me' wording. I think he's referring to incidental or accidental occurences in the course of caring for him and endangered could mean anything from a difference of opinion about driving style to forgetfulness round the house when stressed. Remember he's talked about forgiving her after she's apologised for being 'unreasonable' in the past but never mentioned his apologies and her forgiveness - it's all very master and pupil (in his eyes).

I've long got past being interested in the detail but am not at all surprised by the style of his recent posts, they're much of a muchness with the earlier ones. Yet again, just enough new material to keep us interested and responding to him.

We don't really know about her - a few descriptions of impetuous or frustrated behaviour - or about their relationship. We do know all about how he's chosen to address us. My view on that is set out in earlier posts, yesterday's particularly.

He's desparate for attention and obsessed with being able to tell people he's right. He is quite skilled at stringing people along with his story and trying to manipulate their responses (not succeeding but good at trying).

Ultimately I think he's tied himself up in his own self-righteous fantasy so badly that he's confused himself and boxed himself in to a completely fixed-point view of other people and the world.

I don't think he's in a position to learn anything, from us, counselling, talkking to his wife, his friends, anything, until he decides he has anything at all to learn (about anything other than straightforward textbook facts) and opens his mind to the possibility of doing so. I don't see that happening any time soon, unfortunately for all concerned.

Normally, threads that go on this long do so because the OP is going on a journey of some sort and posters are supporting them. The contentious sort where someone is just being instransigent 'AIBU? Yes you are. No I'm not!' are shorter. OP has fed us just enough new material to give the impression this was the former sort. Actually it was and remains the latter.

And for that reason, that he's taking nothing at all on board and just wants our attention as a type of validation in itself and an opportunity to win converts to his cause, I'm out.

To everyone who still cares about my post and is still reading, or an interested new reader…. Thank you for your patience, guidance and thoughts….even if some of them have left me feeling bitter and frustrated and asking more questions than I had ever intended.

I am keen to learn from the advice I get her and as you will see from my earlier posts, I did take on board views that I hadn’t considered before, and as a result of this I was able to talk to my wife, resolve the issues we had about when my parents would meet us after the birth. I thank you all for enlightening me on these issues.

My posts continued though as I felt there were some very strong views being given to me about the lack of respect for fathers wishes purely due to the emotional and physical trauma a woman goes through before during and after labour. I personally felt that this was far too disrespectful to the father and prompted a debate on this. Not at all what I had intended to happen in my original post, and not something I have done to get attention, but to enjoy a healthy debate and broaden my own understanding of something completely new to me (being a father and parenthood).

The posts have worked almost like therapy for me thereafter in allowing me to express my concerns that I have regarding my wife’s behaviour, and particularly now that we have a baby on the way.

Lancelottie made a comment that is so close to the truth it is almost painful to read - I am now wondering whether Simba's original post was a final-straw sort of cry for help in a relationship where his partner genuinely is so frequently unreasonable that he had no idea that this time, she was being perfectly justified in her request.
I mentioned previously now that I am scared about what may happen in the future because of her unreasonable behaviour, and on this occasion I genuinely did think she was being unreasonable, but I now understand that she wasn’t.

There have been several questioned asked asking for more specifics, so let me cover a few. I don’t really want to divulge too much for my own identity sake (I trust you can appreciate this), but appreciate why these questions have been asked:

How, why and when did she “hurt you physically” – there have been a number of occasions. All of them boil down to the fact that she has not been able to cope with a difficult situation, be that at work, personal life, things I have done that haven’t pleased her (nothing catastrophic btw, just general relationship ups and downs). But what she has learnt, and I have let her, ultimately down to me not wanting to live my life without her, is that she can take out her anger on her loved ones, without too many repercussions. I say this because whilst she has never been physically abusive to her Mum, the things she has said to her are unbelievably horrible and distasteful. But she knows that we will always be there for her, and we will be because we love her.

Hurt me physically – examples include punching, kicking, using objects to hit me with, throwing an iron at my head. The other day she knocked me over with an open car door….something she knew would happen if she reversed as she did….outside of my place of work.

Irrational driving – in addition to the above, she once decided to stop on the slip road down to a motorway. Not on the hard shoulder, on the road, because she was angry with a situation in her life at the time. It was on a complete blind spot for people driving down that road and the only reason we weren’t hit was to this day a blessing from god. More worrying though, not long ago, she again got angry and decided to drive through a red light, weave in and out of cars before pulling over and demanding I get out of the car. It was this incident which lead me to going to the doctors about her behaviour. She was 20 weeks or so pregnant at this time. It was one of the hardest choices had to make as I was unsure of what the consequences could be for all of us. The GP has supported her by arranging counselling and to help her with her very occasional suicidal thoughts.

Minesapintoftea – no I haven’t told the full details of what goes on to my parents. Only my closest friends, who I mentioned in an earlier post have been unbelievably supportive although desperately trying to see that I shouldn’t be putting up with behaviour like this. I wouldn’t tell my parents for the fear of what they would do or say, although they know she can be irrational at times they have no idea of the full extend to this

Scarlet – other than the issue of me wanting to the baby to meet my parents, I have tried to support my wife every way I can. She is off work currently due to a very difficult and stressful situation which hasn’t helped matters of late, but has allowed her to concentrate on the pregnancy. I work 6 days a week often, then come home and cook tea, wash up, sort out our animals and anything else required. I will always try to support her when and where I can.

TheFabulousIdiot – My mother often says things without realising how they may be interpreted. I often have to explain to her why what she said was interpreted the way it was and most of the times my Mum understands it when it is explained to her, but always followed by the comment “I didn’t realise”. Now I am sure you are thinking no one can be that stupid to not realise what they are saying, and I am sure my Mum is not stupid, just naive and set in her ways. They have been many things done over the years which show their support for us both over the years, which never seem to be given the same importance as the occasional bad turn of phrase. Something I may have inherited!!!

And before you say “Why on earth are you still with your wife”, or “Why do you tolerate such behaviour”…. I want you to know that if I was reading somebody else saying these things….I would be asking the same questions.

Until you walk in these shoes it’s impossible to understand. I love my wife so dearly that I cannot imagine my life without her…and now our baby. I have tolerated this behaviour because I know that she has a Jekyll & Hyde character. Our highs are unbelievable, and our lows ridiculous to anyone from the outside. I have often wondered if the grass is greener elsewhere, but when you can see the grass can be golden where you are at times, it makes me at least prepared to put up with the odd burnt bit.

But I fear now that my baby could be put in a situation I would not dream of wanting someone close to me to be in. Maybe I am worrying about something that won’t happen, but after 10 years and many milestones which I would hope would help get rid of Jekyll, or Hyde (I never know which is the bad one!) it hasn’t happened yet.

The line I have for my wife to cross before I think what she has done is unreasonable has been pretty far out of my eyesight, but now the baby is involved, I am instinctively feeling that line is hurtling towards me. And that is a really scary thought when implications of this are considered.

The biggest drip feed in the history of mankind.

If that is the case, please report your DW to the Police and seek professional help to deal with what has happened to you.

Oh dear I worry for the child coming into this situation. A lot. Was she violent before she was pregnant?

You should report any domestic violence. This is a crazy situation.

I can't imagine the epic posts that are going to follow this latest update.

Simba you need to get couples counselling! for the sake of your baby.

I would advise you to step away from this thread, and seek help and support from your r/l friends.

I wish you good luck.

Your marriage is not one of love, it is of codependency.
I suspect you are afraid of being on your own and admitting to your parents that your marriage has failed.
It is a matter of time before it all collapses, get out while you still have some control.

Simba, if even half of what you say is true, you are in an abusive marriage and you need to get out. As someone just posted, you need to report the abuse to the police. And your wife needs serious help, as do you, to help you both decide what to do. If she will not go, go alone. I think it's obvious to anyone who's read this thread that you need help, the fact that you say your wife has abused you does not change that fact, but your most recent posts certainly indicate that your wife does, too.

I agree with SDTG, what you are (apparently) living with is more than a bunch of random people on MN can help you with. You need to seek help and support in RL.

Only 50 more posts though, not much room for more drip feeding

All of the responses to your original question address it in great depth. However, the new announcements about your wife's violence- which somehow was not important enough to mention before- totally overshadow the previous debate.

Your latest revelations describe a violent criminal who is not safe around a newborn baby. Golden grass is no consolation to a newborn infant within chucking distance of an iron. Whatever stress you and your wife are under now will feel a thousand times worse when you are sleep-deprived and trying to deal with a crying baby.

If all of the above is genuine, then you need to go to the police . She needs to be prosecuted for dangerous driving and for assault, and social services need to step in to protect the baby.