Husband regularly breaks 'little' promises

[Dref]

Hello everyone-I am new to this forum! I am newly married but been living with husband for 3 years. Last week for three nights in a row we went out separately but had an arrangement for time we'd be home. Each time he was later than he said by 2 hours. I saw this as 'reasonable' on the thurs and fri eve as he was down pub with friends. But on third eve it was a week night and in the morning I reminded him I was teaching all evening at home and therefore wouldn't have time to cook. So he offered to do it. We also agreed that morning we had to finish our thankyou cards to wedding guests who'd given us presents because his Mum had sent a curt email 'reminding' us after her friend hinted she'd had no card. We had actually arranged for him to do his side and me mine because we had a very big wedding and after planning almost all of it because he was busy, I put a limit on the follow up cards, as I've got work too! So this issue went like this and I'd like to know if anyone else would find this annoying/upsetting/inconsiderate?:

husband: 3pm-I've got to go out and I'll be 2 hours (this was an unplanned work thing which cropped up at 3ish)
me: ok, remember you said you'd cook dinner tonight...
DH: I'll only be 2 hours i.e. 5pm
husband: text at 6pm-I'll be half an hour coming home. Am leaving now.
me: 6.45pm husband not home and I twig he's in pub and feel very miffed about dinner arrangement.
Me: have break between 7-8pm and sit down to do the rest of my family/friends thank you cards. Plan was to finish some together as some needed discussion about what to write etc.

I have choice. Fix myself dinner but meant popping to tesco as no shopping in except frozen steak and so on, and therefore abandon now overdue thankyous (his cousin gave us £3000 and I'm getting really self conscious about tardiness of thankyous but my side of family and friends is over 90 guests and I don't want to be lumbered with it all). Or carry on with thank yous. I was really cross. I carried out and posted them and then emailed his MOther to explain how we had shared it but that I'd remind him, he's busy etc. She was fine with that. He was peeved however. Yet all the same did not jump to reply to his Mum that this was his tardiness, not mine.

Going back to when I rang, he was very defensive. He apologised for not being back or texting. Said he thought I was teaching until 8pm and would be back by then to cook. So why say your going to be 2 hours then? Why not say, I'm going to be two hours but may go for a drink and get specific facts about timing. Anyway, I said 9pm to him 3 times.

He also lunched out of my cousins dinner on the Saturday because he was so hungover from Friday. That annoyed me a bit too. On Sunday his sister had a lunch and I wanted to cancel because I was a bit fuzzyheaded from Saturday, but then I didn't drink what I couldve because my SIL had a lunch. From experience, if I'd cancelled he'd have been really upset.

I want to be relaxed about things like this but I was annoyed. Am I being unreasonable to have been pissed off last night? How do I deal with this? It stops for a while and then creeps back in.

De'ja'vu just seen this in AIBU

TBH, you don't own him, stop trying to and stealth boasting about 3k wedding checks is v declasse'

You hear that as stealth boasting which says something about you. My husband thinks it isn't necessary to send any form of thankyou and I think we should for a 3000 cheque. His Mum is getting arsey about it.

I don't own him? Really? I thought that was what marriage was about?

No, marriage is about communication, respect, compassion...

If he's letting you down now before any children are thrown into the mix, what's he going to be like when you are breastfeeding a newborn and have a toddler with earache?

He's showing you who he is, he's showing a distinct lack of respect for you and is putting himself first - you need to adress this now.

Why did you email his mother?

Surely you should send a thank you for any present, regardless of value. If your DH isn't bothered about sending thank you letters then I think you should do them yourself. You will both be judged on the lack of them, rather than people thinking it is down to one of you.

Just suck it up and write them, once they're done you don't have to worry anymore.

YANBU to be annoyed about the lack of communication last night, but there is no need to sulk about it. Just tell him you need him to communicate effectively and then park the issue.

Write the Thankyou cards yourself to stop them stressing you.

Then join him in the pub. Life's too short to be micro managing his (and your) free time.

Been reading your version of this thread on AIBU, OP.

How old are you both? I'm not being snidey i'm genuinely asking.

Also - sorry if you've said and i've missed it, but how long have you been together? Before you got married?

i say just write the cards.

dont let a resentment with him stop you from doing the right thing, you will both end up looking rude.

I am going to write the cards now and everyone is having one-not sure where the notion that it was selective came from. At the start I offered to write them all but then he started criticising the cards I'd chosen saying they shouldn't be usd for his family. I was upset as I showed them on the JOhnLewis website and he agreed they were fine. So I lost my confidence with his family (quite a different background to mine). I agree it makes us both look tardy. I do feel let down.

Anyway, we are both in our 30s. I have to say I feel like I'm regressing. He hasn't had a major relationship before. He can very childish. We have been together 3 years in total. Not long.

leave the bastard...there I've said it

He sounds like a whanger who thinks that you are his servant and that all the domestic work and social obligation-type work is down to you, because he is Mor Important and therefore Entitled to Leisure Time.
While a lot of nasty sexist men wait till the first baby arrives to demonstrate just how superior they think having a penis makes them, some sexist men change as soon as the wedding cake's been eaten: they decide that now you are Wife you have stopped being a person and have been transformed into a cross between household appliance and pet-in-need-of-training.

I think when you are both feeling better, talk to him specifically about the predicting his return thing. He appears to think that saying he'll be back at acceptable time X avoids you getting the hump over him being out too much, whereas it actually just makes things worse and causes you genuine inconvenience. Tell him to man up, if he wants to stay out late and get pissed then he needs to tell you about it and have the row up front.

There's an awful lot about him annoying other people in order to make a beeline for alcohol in your post. Are you in fact worried about his drinking? do you think you should be?

Re the thank you stuff; the pressure appears to be coming from his mother, not from the other guests. I suggest that you get an email address of your own, and not have a shared one, so that she can't pressure you so much. If his mother rings you re his social obligations, just say 'My husband's dealing with that'. Don't put him down to her or cover for him, just refuse to be drawn.

If you don't want to do that, then just do the thank you letters and accept that he doesn't think it's important and you do. But that's quite a big job to take on for the rest of your life.

Shit! I didnt write any thank you cards!!.... They had a bloody good party though!!!

My DH an i got our thank-you cards done after a terrific amount of huffing and puffing and putting it off. From the pair of us! It wasn't that we were ungrateful, just that it's such a ... repetative and boring task but it has to be done with allot of thought and care.

All the pics in these wedding magazines of the happy new couple sitting at a lovely table, with the cards they chose together, blissfully writing their cards 2 minutes after the wedding. While gazing into each others eyes. With the sun streaming through the window. Bah! With us it was:

One of us: "Are we going to do those bloody cards tonight?" again
The other: "Grooooaaaannn. Yeah, yeah. Later. Tomorrow? You start!"

Anyway - sorry i know this is not all about the cards. Just wanted to let you know it's not just you two not relishing the card writing.

OP, SGB and Joan have made some really good points above. It does strike me as a simple sign of respect for a couple to either do what they say they are going to or at least keep the other in the loop. 3 years isn't long - but it's long enough to set a pattern for how you treat each other.

Do sit down with him when you are feeling relaxed and talk about this honestly. Tell him how you feel. Ask him how he feels. DO you think it's about alcohol? How are things this morning?

I think YANBU, he sounds annoying at the moment.

I did all our thank you's as not working then but also got nagged by MIL which is super irritating!

My 2 pieces of advice FWITW..,

1. someone once told me men respond best to calm bullet point discussions.
   E.g...'I have 3 things I need to discuss with you, first you have been unreliable here are two examples..., etc etc' and then finish off with 'and I need those things to change so I can lead my life in a more organised, less illogical way (they also hate being accused of being the illogical ones, whereas accusations of selfishness often shrugged off )

2. I know this is bad & some people will tell me off for this but...
   I always do our talking in bed if we get an early night, it's sort of calmer and there's no sport, laptop etc as distractions.

This is about respect, manners and sexism, in my view.

It's respectful and good manners to do what you've said you're going to do and needs to be underpinned by the attitude that your time is as important and valuable as his.

As for the suggestions that you send the thank you cards, nip that in the bud right away. It's his responsibility and don't take it or others holding him to it, away.

I don't see why you should write his bloody thank-yous.
It's a boring job and so he needs to do his share, as agreed.
He sounds like a PITA at the mo.

I completely agree with sternface and SGB on this one.

I don't know if this will be helpful, but my STBXH started out doing stuff like this (especially the - I'll be home in an hour routine). I would try and talk to him about it as an adult, explaining how I felt when he turned up 3 or 4 hours later without letting me know (suddenly unable to text) and me waiting for him having cooked his dinner - let down, hurt, disrespected etc. Then I would lay down boundaries in a mature manner and explain what would happen if he did it again. Then I would sulk. Then I would shout at him. Everytime he would admit I was right and say he wouldn't do it again. He always did it again. It got much worse when we had kids.

I just gave up in the end, because it didn't happen that often (once every 3 months or so) and I thought our relationship was good otherwise and these 'minor' issues weren't worth the heartbreak it was causing. Turned out he was a compulsive liar and cheat.

Now dref - I hope my H is an extreme case, but I do think these indicators of lack of respect and bad manners need to be sorted out right now. Do not let yourself be told they are unimportant. The fact you've posted about them shows that there is a nagging, gut feeling that something is off here. Go with that.

It is worrying that he's like this now you've married (was he like it before?) and unfortunately I agree with SGB that he probably has a wife = domestic servant attitude. I hope it's just a hangover from his parents marriage and a sharp kick up the arse from his new bride will rocket him into 2012.

He sounds like a selfish "single" man OP.

Thanks for all the helpful posts. I was still stewing last night so didn't handle it well but this morning we had a chat. For the last two nights he has rang/texted when we arranged to confirm our dinner plans.I am well aware though that this could slip back-probably a hangover from being single so long-and evident in the beginning of our relationship. I think being married has possibly lulled him into a false sense of security. I agree it's sexist.

I re-negotiated the cleaning too as we acquired a rumba which meant his share which was mainly hoovering was just switching this machine on/off! The rest of his cleaning was bins whilst I do bathroom/bedroom. Recently he's been saying I can't put this and that in the bin, it has to be taken straight to neighbours compost, that to the main bin. So I asked him to clean the tiles in the bath/shower and he agreed. I know I'll end up reminding, I mean, nagging him. He grew up with a cleaner who was female. He didn't do any cleaning, apart from keeping room tidy, and probably never heard any arguments over cleaning. Plus been single. He did say he's learning how to be in a relationship though (his parents don't seem to like each other, let alone love each other I'm afraid, don't celebrate valentine, anniversaries and rubbish them so had a particular type of role model for a marriage).

I think what I'll do with the thankyous first is ask him when he will factor in the time because it represents both of us and therefore make it clear he agreed something and it's reflecting on both of us. I do agree also that I could just go ahead and do it but I want him to ask me and acknowledge the initial agreement. He gets very defensive when I say anything because he has a big crumple button that he is not a good person-any comment pointing out some shortcoming jars with this and he can be VERY argumentative back and brings in ammunition from all over the place. Queenofsurburbia-I am going to try your approach. I know he likes the idea of being logical so would prob get to him. Basically, I have to have a strategy for coping with this in a clever way.

Having to have "strategies" sounds exhausting OP.

I think the more limits you set someone, the more you try to control their actions, the more likely they are to break out. That original thing about having 2 hours to do X and being home by X o'clock... sounds stifling. I would suggest you try treating each other like grown-ups, set a few broad parameters and, if things fall flat without people needing constant reminders, then reassess whether this relationship is really working.

How annoying. I would cut MIL off and tell her to deal directly with her son for a start. People are very willing to deal with the person who they think will crumble/be easier - don't let that happen. Just repeat "John will be dealing with that, you should speak to him about it" (or whatever H's name is) until fade.

also nip the "awfulising " in the bud.

Someone who pulls the stunt "oh yes, i am such a terrible husband/man/lover, I always get it wrong, I can't even drive a car/keep a job/clean the tiles....etc etc" is deflecting from the original discussion hoping you will move to comfort and reassure rather than continue to confront the main issue...do not be deflected!!!

There are quite a few bells ringing in your OP so i hope that you are a strong woman and keep your knowledge of what a relationship should be like and keep your boundaries in place, especially as it sounds like his parental modelling was a bit

As you only had frozen steak in the house, could it be possible that after his two hours of work he realised that as he said he would do dinner, he would need to shop for it too, and that is where he went?

If it were me, i'd text and say "Im startving and want to get through these cards. Im ordering a takeaway as theres nothin in, do you want me to order you anything?"