Husband booked lads' holiday over daughter's birthday festival weekend

[JDIMum]

Looking for some advice please. My daughter age 8 is a huge Nathan Evans fan - Scottish singer for those of you not familiar. He is playing at a family festival in Edinburgh in August. Friends of ours are going with their children and making a weekend of it so we (my husband & our 3 kids age 11,8,6)thought we’d book to go as part of my daughter’s 9th birthday. Tickets were bought in January, accommodation sorted & paid for - we are staying at glamping pods where our friends are too.
Now my husband goes away with his friends once a year - they have a betting club together and they bet on the football each week - any wins they get the money goes in the pot for the holiday. At the weekend there my husband said they’d booked their betting club holiday. Fly on 19th August & back on 23rd. Straight away I said the festival is 21st-23rd???? Now my husband is super forgetful like really bad he never remembers dates for anything so has clearly forgot this was booked. I am absolutely fuming. I would never book a holiday without running dates past him - not to get his permission but just to let him know! First he’s mentioned it was the weekend & apparently it’s been booked for a few weeks???? Wtf? I said to him if he’d mentioned the dates I could have reminded him about the festival. I’ve since not spoken to him in 2 days. I’m so annoyed. He turned it back on me saying ‘I clearly don’t want him to go away with his friends & it’s always an issue’. I can assure you it’s never an issue!!!! I think it’s important for us both to go away with friends. We’ve been together 22 years & married for 12 I’ve never ever grudged him a boys holiday but I’m raging! I want him to either cancel his place or come back on the Friday night/Sat morning so he can still come with us! Am I being unreasonable????

This is a hill to die on for me.

But you give him the choice, ask him what he wants to prioritise.
If it’s the lads holiday then you know that you and children don’t mean as much. What you do with that is up to you, but I’d be getting a divorce. He can do what he wants then.

Oh, and please ignore people like @Sashya

More often these days, I think that Mumsnet is attracting people from the bowels of Reddit. I suspect most of them are manipulative men who delight in making women doubt themselves.

Men and their inability to check diaries and prioritise their family over themselves, I mean what are they like

a lot of posters on this thread are very forgiving of shitty behaviour!

Time to stop picking up any of his slack. Work everything to your own advantage from now on op. Don't warn him or let him know, just focus on what's on your own best long-term interests.

How exactly would she be ‘throwing her weight around’ in that situation? Telling him to clean up a spilt cup of coffee? Telling him to pick up a credit card that accidentally fell out of his wallet? Telling him cancel a trip that shouldn’t have been booked in the first place?

He fucked up. He fixes the fuck up. It’s not exerting power, it’s stating the bleedin’ obvious.

Jeez I can only assume this thread is peppered with insecure pick me tradwives who submit to everything that their husbands say, lest they be accused of not knowing their place 🙄

Oh sorry I’ve managed to quote the wrong post. My reply was supposed to be for @PrizedPickledPopcorn

"That said I always have to remind him if we have stuff on, sometimes two/three times as he has a terrible memory!" @JDIMum

Bet you don't have to remind him when he's doing something for himself or with his mates do you...🙄'selective memory syndrome'

I wouldn't be happy at all.

Extremely rude and unacceptable to book anything without double checking with a partner that its free, most particularly when you have children.

He thinks he is a single man and the children are ultimately your responsibility.

Completely unacceptable to me.

I wouldn't be happy taking 3 children on my own to a festival.
It's too much.

At least you know his priorities.
Not acceptable.

This is the second thread in a couple of days where fathers have dropped arrangements with their children in favour of going on a boozed up break with their friends, and the mothers left behind picking up the pieces have been roundly berated for a) not being cool with it, as it is just an innocent little mistake, and b) for upsetting their children by allowing the children to expect their father's presence in the first place. WHAT THE FUCK?! Keeping committments is the bare minimum we expect with acquaintences, let alone your closest dependent family members. Why should women be covering for lazy, disrespectful, selfish men, who clearly care very little for their own offspring, and doing so with a smile so as not to make the man feel any guilt or remose for his actions? You are not a "cool wife" if you do this, you are a doormat who is not respected by your partner anywhere near as much as he respects his mates.

OP, I have little advice other than I understand your anger and sadness at being bottom of the pile in terms of prioritisation, and your H needs to tell your daughter and your friends in person that he has chosen to dump them in favour of a recent offer with his betting friends. Be with him whilst he does this, so he does not lie.

Same. I would ask him it’s up to him who is priority his.

a) His children and his wife who he already made a commitment

b) His mates who he ditching his family for.

I doubt I would divorce over this but I would be looking at my husband in a new light.

Or at work. Whenever I hear of these tactically useless men with “memory problems” the memory deficit is always remarkably specific - specific to anything which can be fobbed off onto the woman in the equation. Somehow when it comes to work and the essential outing hobbies the memory always holds up. Its never a one off either, its always a pattern.

As for “giving him the choice” - he made the choice himself when he firstly had children and accepted the restrictions which come with parenting and secondly when he booked the festival.

Its never just about one incident - its about wanting or not to spend then next 30 years lying to people to excuse and cover for him, picking up the slack for his cock ups. Anyone can make one mistake but most parents would immediately fix the problem and prioritise the family engagement. Perhaps he just never intended to go, especially considering how willing he is to turn it back on the OP.

Honestly, if there is just one piece of weaponry a man keeps in his arsenal it’s the ‘I forgot’ card. They never forget what’s important to them like what time they are teeing off or what time they are meeting their mates at the pub, or what time the match starts! I do wish women would stop falling for this.

THIS!! All of this. 💯

In addition to his wife and three children, he's dumping the friends they were supposed to be glamping with because he got a better offer.

I'd be incandescent if he didn't immediately cancel his trip away with his mates. It's insane that he thinks he can bail on his daughter's birthday present trip, expect you to cope with 3 kids at a festival and let family friends down.

Selfish dick.

I think they take you straight to your doormat award.

#aimhigh

It's not about being as good at parenting, when you're on your own you either get on with it or you stay at home all the time and do nothing. I'd go mad if I never left the house!

Anyone who calls it a "lad's" holiday is clearly not an adult.

No give him a choice ( don’t back him into a corner ) and it’ll show you his priorities. If he goes then he tells the kids and your daughter that that’s what he has chosen. Use the money that would be spent by him on yourselves to have a nice time, and look at your relationship forensically.
I suspect if told to sort it out he will come up with something but if you give him an ultimatum he’ll cut his nose off to spite his face.

But OP isn’t on her own

I didn't say she was. I was replying to the person who said it wasn't possible to take three children to a festival alone.

Regardless, being married doesn't mean you suddenly become incapable of looking after your children without another adult.

The not apologising makes me think he did it on purpose

Sounding a lot like conscious/weaponised incompetence to me op.

It's not hard to remember your child's birthday nor is it hard to use a calendar. But it's easy to make mistakes when you rely on someone else to do the grunt work of logistics and decline to communicate with them as it suits. I think you're quite reasonable I suggest he goes but comes back early so he can honour the commitment he's already made to your child.

It kind of does camping at festivals when you have 3. It means you’re not allowed into swimming pools on your own with them when young as it’s one adult per two children under 8 max at all of our pools, and it means festivals where you have to take them all everywhere is SHIT. Lumping a 3 or 4 year old across a field a few times in a row because their legs are tired while carrying all the survival snacks and jumpers, then back becaue someone needs a wee, now someone’s screaming because they wanted to see that show, now they’re all screaming because two wanted to go in different directions and the babies joined in, irs just an epically shit time with you stressed out non stop and that’s not even including the camping. My dh suggested he take our 3 camping solo a few years back when they’d have been 1, 4 and 7 and I said over my
Dead body you’d struggle to keep them safe, you couldn’t go for a wee nor could any of them without waking them all up, cooking in open air and minding a 1 and 4 year old, never mind the 7yo is a runner… You’d have to divorce me and take me to court to allow it.

Definitely his problem to sort out and as others have said, maybe in the future this will teach him not to use ignorance as an excuse.

There's not going to be a swimming pool at this festival, its at a showground in Edinburgh. And her kids are 11, 8 & 6, so if she was desperate to seek out a pool, she could happily take them in without restrictions. Plus she doesn't need to lump a 3/4 year old anywhere unless she happens to find one somewhere, as she doesn't have one.