Yesterday my 3 young kids and I went to my parents’ house for a family birthday celebration. My husband joined us later. As he arrived my 2 oldest kids were riding their bikes in the drive with my dad. My mum then put a bike helmet on my 2 yr old as she’d asked me earlier if he’d like to try an old balance bike they have at their house - I’d agreed. He wandered around with it between his legs a bit - didn’t really get the idea 😂 but had fun anyway.
I walked to where my husband was further down the drive, expecting him to be enjoying the moment too. He seemed emotional but was smiling slightly, and said ‘I can’t believe this. I feel disengaged from my own kids…This isn’t making me feel like a very good parent’. I said, assuming he just needed some reassuring - ‘ah it’s okay, we don’t have this kind of (any!) flat driveway space at home to ride bikes’. He said, ‘NO, we can go to the park’. Then seemingly out of nowhere he cruelly and coldly said ‘they’re both meatheads aren’t they’…I actually said, ‘who are meatheads?’ as I was so taken-aback. I had to walk away from him as I knew I’d get upset, so I went inside the house. He followed a minute later carrying our youngest inside, saying ‘I had to take him in, it was upsetting me too much.’
My husband has reacted like this before, starting about 5 yrs ago. He has a bee in his bonnet that my dad in particular jumps in and does things, eg teaching to ride a bike, that he should be doing. I can’t think of an example where this has actually happened…but I’m sure my husband would say it would’ve done if he hadn’t stopped it. Even my parents singing songs from their childhoods to our kids, reading books to them, all ends in him looking upset. He ruined Christmas by petulantly blurting out just as we were about to leave ‘I can’t stand your silly little father. I find him so irritating.’ My parents are 10 mins away but we barely visit once a month as I dread the bad mood from my husband.
The 2 main contributing issues I can think of are 1) he’s 18 yrs older than me so much closer in age to my parents than me. His own mother is in her 90s and isn’t that interested in kids generally and 2) he grew up without any living grandparents himself, so has no precedent for ‘sharing’ his kids and thinks my parents are insensitive and showing him up by being too involved. There is no reason for this - he’s a great dad and does loads of activities with them. I try to make sure he does milestones, eg he took them to the cinema for the first time 2 days ago.
We didn’t speak for the rest of the day. I feel like he doesn’t care about me as he can’t find a way to handle my only slightly annoying family. They’ve never said a nasty word to him and we’ve been together nearly 20 years. I concede they are both very active and ‘organiser’ types, so tend to schedule us for events before we’ve really thought what we want to do…it grates on me sometimes too. my dad is an engineer, possibly a little on the spectrum so can miss social cues. On the other hand his mum told my eldest he was a ‘bad boy’ amongst other nasty little negs to me also (I need elocution lessons, my breastmilk tested) and I put up with it because she’s his Mum and we can’t change that…why can’t he do the same for me?
Genuinely starting to read around divorce. I think he’s trying and laughing it off, then he gets really vicious and angry again. Wider issues…bedroom is totally dead, he mainly talks to me to moan or rant.