'I'm not doing the school run'

[Quattrocento]

Announced DH, ten minutes ago. Tuesdays are his day, and not mine. I take a deep breath, for I am booked on a 7am flight (which means check-in at 6am and getting up at 5am) which he knew all about, well in advance.

I ask him why. He tells me he does not have to explain himself. Which I think means that he has no good reason for not taking them. Before you ask, there is zero public transport, it's 8 miles away and too far to walk/cycle and all available lifts seem to be taking extended half-terms.

He is being a twat of the first order, and I have no idea why. I've booked a taxi for the DCs, so that problem is solved, despite it not being my problem to solve. But I am concerned about DH's general twattishness here.

So tell me why my husband is being a twat. I'd like to know.

Sorry, realise that

HullyGully - if it isn't about that I would be extraordinarily surprised

Warthog, I'm not trying to be mysterious, I just feel that previous issues are hugley relevant in his current behaviour.
If people think I'm being inapropriate, I'll stop harping on.

Yes, I would show him the thread.

The amount of respect I would have lost for my husband if he pulled a stunt like that is immense.

I'd have probably booked the taxi too - because at that point, he would have struck me as someone worthless to argue with, whose opinion I no longer cared for. Just as when that thick, irritating colleague or family member does something atrocious and you raise an eyebrow and ignore it - not because you're rolling over and taking it, but because they're simply beneath arguing with and you aren't interested in what made them say X.

Mr. Quattro, be careful of showing your intelligent, dynamic life partner the extent to which you might just be morphing into pondlife. Middle age is a tricky time, you know?

Men absolutely hate feeling like stopgaps for the lives their wives have engineered. Now, I absolutely get that this arises mostly because women, by and large, have vastly superior organisational and multi-tasking skills to men, and rather than wait for their menfolk to organise family life, they do so and assign roles and responsibilities to him.

And one day men wake up and feel that their role in the family is to do the things their wives tell them and that aren't being cherished for their unique contribution to family life (quite possibly because they aren't making one).

The only way forward is to sit down, calmly, and to talk through things without apportioning blame.

I think we all feel annoyed if we feel we're being taken for granted. And in an ideal world we tell our partners rationally. Of course in RL annoyances spill out in less rational ways.

I am not...ahem...above being a bit shouty when I feel frustrated. Dh does the old quite routine. Neither terribly grown up or rational.

But I would hope that neither of us would ever punish one another by doing somehting via the DC. Actually I know DH would never do this and I hope I wouldn't stoop so low.
For me it's just one of those lines that I feel should never be crossed. Fortuantely DH feels the same.

On the 'being direct' thing. It's fucking hard to learn to be direct if you are a serial avoider. I have sat with DH beside me in a mad rage/with tears rolling down my face physically unable to vocalise what is wrong with me and him desparately trying to understand and help in any way he can.

I am slowly getting better.

This includes the recent major victory of telling DH that I had eaten some of the filled pasta that he was going to have for his lunch. There was no reason for me not to eat it, I bought it, he'd already had some and I hadn't, all food is fair game in our house. But my immediate instinct was to say "okay darling" and pretend that I hadn't had any. After a ridiculous amount of internal debate, I called through to the kitchen "oh I forgot, I had a few of them last night so there might not be much left". His response was "yes, I saw that. I'll have some of x as well". No drama, no issues yet I was so fucking afraid of saying those few words.

Maybe it's something about being a lawyer as well - sucking up the unreasonable client/unreasonable lawyer on the other side/ unreasonable colleague in some frenzied attempt to meet all expectations and prevent someone from flouncing away from the negotiating table; your booking the taxi is a bit like redrafting something at the 11th hour just to get the deal down despite knowing it's entirely unreasonable, unnecessary and probably vindictive. I do find that I have to turn that side off at home in order to connect better with my (also a lawyer) DH.

Hope the talk goes well at the weekend.

mal - there's nothing you can do if quattro doesn't want us to know the history.

it's all vairy strange if you ask me. which i appreciate no-one is.

Causing problem before the flight is nastiness in my book.

The 'i don't have to explain myself to you' shows hostility , and resentment.

Not even calling/texting at the hotel shows that he didn't even regret it.

I usually am a bit hmm when people here say 'maybe he is depressed' but in this case i'm thinking he might be.

Regarding OP's career: i mentioned earlier my ex doing this the night before a big day. I didn't have a big career. My 'crime' was that i was-or i seemed to be- happier than him. I was more 'together', more confident than him, not depressed like him. Misery likes company, so if he is depressed and/or doesn't like himself he wants you to be the same.

The hotel thing is very bizzare . He didn't suggest a weekend away (to make up), he suggested going to sleep in a hotel, midweek, with 2 school age dcs, at a hotel in your area! That's what you do when your house is flooded or your roof colapses.... I don't know what a psychologist would make out of it...

wordfactory - it's frankly not a very serious crime towards the DCs and perhaps Quattro's DH did it precisely because he wants his DCs involved in a renegotiation of family roles. We always talk to our DCs about renegotiations of family roles and it is a massively useful skill set for them to acquire!

I don't think people should be confrontational for the sake of it; being diplomatic is quite an art, but in this case it doesn't seem to be benefitting the OP at all. Her husband's behaviour is truly strange, and if he is aggrieved at her for some reason, he should tell her so, but certainly not take it out on the children.

Bonsoir he decided to 'renegotiate family roles' late at night while his kids were in bed and his wife was getting ready for an early morning flight by presenting her with an ultimatum and walking off? Yeah, right.

And sorry to derail the thread by I'm curious as to which France you live in. I'm French in my mid thirties and I have friends and relatives scattered all over The country. Most couples both work, sometimes the woman makes more money than her partner or even supports him- they all share housework and child care depending on working hours.
Do they all live in a parrallel universe?

Bonsoir, i agree it is not a crime towards the dcs, but it is imo dirty play towards the mother.

Well, it always seems to me that other people's marriages are strange, alien planets. Even with couples I know very, very well I sometimes leave thinking sheesh, I'm glad I don't live on that planet. (And I'm sure they feel the same way when they visit us...)

I am extremely hot-headed, so I have huge respect for how Quattro handled this crisis. But I am not sure that she necessarily views it as a crisis. For me, like some other posters, it is the assault (and I am using that word metaphorically) on the children, on the family as a whole that would need to be addressed as a matter of urgency.

Unlike Bonsoir, I would see this as very serious "crime" in the context of our own family. Indeed, I would see it as a declaration (albeit unspoken) of war on our family unit.

I don't see it as being confronational to say,"just what is your problem bucko?" but then I would have had it out there and then and not slinked out of my own bedroom to stew on it - that's very unhealthy behaviour, I would consider my marriage over if seperate beds after an argument ever became an option.
It was such abnormal and outrageous behaviour to just announce at 10.30 pm that he wasn't taking the kids and he wasn't up for discussion about it, a reasonable person would perhaps have said that they fancied an extra hour in bed so they would book a taxi, surely?
None of it makes any real sense.

That is the same France that I live in, anon. Indeed, my DP has taken the children away on holiday this week on his own.

"The amount of respect I would have lost for my husband if he pulled a stunt like that is immense."

I agree with that.

If taxis are easily/readily available then it was always going to be easily solvable with a quick phone call.

It´s the whole drama that he made it into.

It´s ludicrous that children of that age have no means of getting themselves to school, isn´t it?

Ah I see...it is NOT him being an awkward, troublemaking wank piece then, but rather him conducting a 'renogiation of family roles'.

Thanks Bonsoir for that marvellous interpretation of fuckwittery. If nothing else you have given me a laugh!

Arf at "bucko".

He is being a twat of the highest order. Whether this is a one off occurrence, or he is generally the High Priest of Twattery only Quattro, can say.

FWIW I'm thinking the latter, and I favour a rather massive row.

Why do you think that it's ludicrous diddl? If there is no school bus and they live 8 miles from school, what are they supposed to do?

Malificence - many people would not organise their lives with two working parents and no transport for teenagers. It's a quite a complex logistical scenario, IMVHO.

Bonsoir certainly has a unique take on things, none of which makes any sense to me.

It doesn't sound to me like a man never given the chance to organise family life, more like a man who has opted out almost completely and is unwilling to share the responsibility.

It sounds like the logistics worked quite well before he decided to throw a spanner in the works by having a childish strop.

"Why do you think that it's ludicrous diddl?"

Because there should (imo) be a school bus.

Unlike most posters on this thread, I think it is unhelpful (unless you really, really want to go down the separation and divorce route ASAP) to apportion blame very quickly. Much better to analyse precisely how a family gets to this point and perhaps to then reengineer logistics/renegotiate roles so that everyone feels that they are getting a fair deal.

All dual-working families have tough logistics - so many constraints to work around - and it is worth being frank about this, and trying to see whether one or other lifestyle decision hasn't meant that logistics are more trying than they need be. When couples become merely two people organising their working and children's lives, that is the beginning of the end...