An old friend came up in the holidays and for the first two days, my husband mostly exclusively chatted to her, to the point that I couldn't get a word in edgeways. I know he gets on well with her, and she is lovely and a chatty person, too, but I felt like a third wheel, like the friend was his friend and not even mine. I would ask him to help with our children's things, like getting them ready for the day, and he would shrug it off and just stay seated and chat with my friend. I did all the cooking and cleaning, running around the house after the kids while he sat ignoring me and chatting to my friend for hours. He's usually very touch-feely but didn't touch me at all while my friend was here, and I found that really strange. I did talk to him about it in the end, as it felt so bad I just wanted to sit somewhere and cry. He said he was just trying to make her feel welcome, to which I said I was sure he had, but surely his focus should be on not isolating me, him looking after his kids, getting their teeth and faces clean, and doing any kind of helpful work around the house. I just felt like I was the hired help. I asked him how he would feel if an old friend of his came over and I behaved as he had, but he didn't really respond to that.
I realise he tends to do this when I have friends over, and he comes into the room and dominates the conversation, and I get fed up. Where I could be building relationships with new playdates and finding out news from an old friend, instead, I'm sat listening to him going on and on. I tend to put up with it as I know he doesn't have many friends and loves chatting with people. He does it all the time, though, I've noticed he doesn't bother with my less attractive friends. This recent time, I felt like I was totally invisible, and although he says it wasn't his intention, surely he must know that he was completely ignoring me for hours and hours.
I've been fairly distant since this happened, and I don't know how I feel about him. I never thought he was the kind of man/husband who would ever ignore me like that or make me feel so invisible. I'm considering suggesting counselling as we do have other relationship issues. I guess I'm just wondering what people's thoughts are, am I being unreasonable? Is it normal that he'd behave like this and I'm just overreacting? At the moment, I just feel like he's not the man I thought he was, and I know it's silly over such a small, almost non-eventful thing, but being made to feel barely acknowledged and not touched at all when usually he would be all over me has made me question our relationship. I'm left thinking, is he only into me, as there's usually no one else around in our lives? If we had a bigger friend circle and more female friends around, would he do that all the time? We have such an established life together and the way I feel about him after has thrown me.