Should my wife support me on this?

[OzzyGrandad]

My wife & I attended a Christmas dinner at our daughters in laws. The dinner was on the table but there were still a few items to be placed & finalized. I asked my daughters mother in law if it was ok to start, she said yes. The rest of the party sat down & I had already begun eating. (I admit was not a good move). I believe the son of the mother in law wanted to say grace before dinner & was angry that I had started. He launched into a tirade of abuse, aggressively belittling me about my bad manners. I tried to explain that his mother had said it was ok to start, but this was ignored. I remained calm for the rest of the evening & then we went home. The next day I texted the son, explained my position & informed him that I would not tolerate such verbal abuse again, hoping he would regret being so abusive & apologize. He texted back, F off D Head.
We drop our grandson at his house every weekend & he returns him on Sunday. I asked my wife, when he drops his son off, to be courteous, but to not show any of the usual friendliness, just pick him up & say goodbye until he apologizes to me for his behavior. My wife refused, saying it was between me & him. She behaved as if nothing had happened & was friendly.
My question to the readers of this story is, should my wife have agreed to just be courteous & not friendly, or was she right to ignore my feelings on the matter.

OP, now you're just being silly. No one is saying you have to bend over and meekly accept abuse. Of course you have the right to stand up for yourself.

But with guys like this, you have be strategic about it. Blustering and demanding an apology just plays right into his hands, and only makes you look silly and weak.

There were several other options you could've chosen to handle the situation. For example:

• Diffuse the situation with humour. You could have said with a laugh something like: "Calm your farm, mate. You're acting like a prima donna!"

• Treat him like a small child having a temper tantrum. "Oh dear, it looks like you have Big Feelings about this issue." (Spoken in a kindly, yet patronising tone).

• Ignored him, and kept on eating. Let him rant. Who gives a [bleep] about what this bloke thinks?

• Told him calmly: "I don't appreciate being spoken to like that. When you're ready to be civil, then we can have a conversation.."

Any of those options would likely have taken the wind out of his sails. But even if he did keep on verbally abusing you, you could have simply left. Collected your wife and grandson, and gone home.

Your biggest concern is how to protect Locky from him when he hits his teen years and his ‘dad’ lets him do anything and drink and smoke and go out, and you guys don’t. Locky will want to be with his dad who’s cool and lets him do bad things etc

This, from a poster further up, is something I agree with 100 percent. The incident at Christmas should actually be the least of your worries, OP.

In ten years time, do you want your 14 year old grandson spending his Saturday nights on the couch with his old man, punching cones and necking VB? Because honestly, that's going to be a very real possibility.

Thanks for your response. I thought most of my replies were reasonably polite, even to the posters who attacked me, making wild accusations about my character etc. I suspect they weren't interested in helping me, many of them just seem to relish pouring scorn on me. I don't know them, so it does not affect me negatively, but still, it is a life lesson. There are some nasty people out there. Life will go on as usual, but our usual warm friendship towards friends & family will be limited with the father.

If a woman came on here and said her husband called her those names then 100% she's going to be told it's abuse and she should leave.

It's abuse whoever it's aimed at and by whoever is doing it.