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????

Sometimes I don’t get the reactions on here to be honest. If anyone posted and I said ‘I have a camping trip to a festival booked and paid for months ago and now my friend/sister/partner has cancelled as they have got a better offer’ people would be saying that isn’t acceptable and that people should honour their commitments. But on this thread there’s a lot of posters saying that the OP is unreasonable? Like the fact it’s a lads trip makes it ok?

OP, he’s has messed this up. He should be honouring his prior commitment. A festival isn’t something that can moved to a different weekend. Very poor on his part.

It my husband did this, I would be irritated that he had not checked our family calendar. He would then be mortified and either cancel or amend the trip so that he could attend the festival. He wouldn’t complain about missing the lads’ trip as he would know he had messed up. No way would he let his family, and the other friends down. He isn’t a hero; this is the baseline of decent behaviour from anyone.

I’d never miss a family event that was already arranged! So your comment is pointless. Truth be told I haven’t spoken to my husband but he has also not spoken to me, not apologised & not made an effort to fix his f**k up! As other ppl had said if this was just a ‘family event’ I actually wouldn’t care! This is a festival/holiday for 3 days with 3 young kids? Something he knew was booked & has been for a while & he has then booked something else? Not sure what bit of that you are not getting???? So if your husband did this you’d be totally ok with it? You don’t think it’s wrong or disrespectful or selfish????

Theres two offenses. The OP isn't upset and not able to speak to him because he didn't check the Calendar. In isolation that's a ridiculous reason to be that annoyed. The issue is when she told him, he turned it back on her and dug his heels in. DH has done that sometimes where it's been a minor issue but his reaction when it's pointed out is what sets me off. He should be adult enough to realise he's fucked up and take steps to sort it. The fact he isn't doing that or acknowledging it is the biggest offense.

@JDIMum if he turned around last week and said "something's come up, I am so sorry but the festival weekend isn't going to work for me anymore because abc. Can we change it to a new event? Is there someone else that can go with you? How can we resolve this". Would you have cried and given him the silent treatment.

I’d be saying to him that he needs to decide where his priorities lie and think about what a decent father and husband would do. Then do that.

I wouldn’t engage further as he’s a selfish arse that buried his head in the sand and was relying on you not saying too much and sucking it up.

Whatever you decide to do about this situation this is an ideal opportunity to put an end to his forgetfulness bullshit. Nobody with a smart phone needs to remember anything at all. There is a calendar. You can also set daily alarms for anything that might get forgotten short term. Maybe he might need to set himself a daily alarm to check your joint calendar but with repetition he'll get the hang of it. Then when he is next with his buddies and planning a trip he will have his availability on his phone, as no doubt they do too.

I'm not suggesting he did this, but I know someone who would have feigned forgetfulness having decided that as you would be with friends, it wouldn't be a big deal for him to skip the festival if it clashed with what his friends wanted to do. If you think he may have done the same then definitely take a very hard line about his lack of commitment to his family.

If he doesn’t go, I’d book yourself a holiday to recover op. And to reconsider your marriage.

the other thing if he doesn’t go is do not protect him. Do not cover for him. Every friend there needs to know that the selfish incompetent bastard booked himself on a fun trip with friends for the same time as the festival and decided to drop his family like a bag of hot potatoes and you are not sure things will ever recover because maybe this has told you who he really is, which is not a dad and not a partner.

Women who end up married to selfish pricks, don't suddenly arrive there.

Invariably it is a boiled frog situation as in this case.

OP has been tolerating and "managing" a selfish sulky man whom she now knows is a liar.

He's not a good man.

He now is doubling down and ppaying chicken with her, as to whom will crack first.

He's a shit husband and father, and a liar to boot.

His sulkying silence is also abusive but OP has been trained by him to manage this.

OP doesn't mention work, housing and finances, but when she has time and space, she should think about her future and what she wants.

She definitely hasn't married a good man and long term she may want to change her status, on HER terms and time line.

Going forward she can drop the rope, stop making his life comfortable, do nothing that benefits him, detach emotionally, confide in friends and family, and plan, plan, plan.

I think some posters are missing the point that he actually booked the glamping pods for the festival and has the email confirmation. He was involved in making these arrangements as much as OP.

I don’t believe he forgot. I think he didn’t want to be the one to say he couldn’t do the selected dates with his mates and decided to press the fuck it button and double book.

I am sure he doesn’t want to lose the money for his lads jolly, but it’s already gone - just like the money for the festival trip.

He needs to view the loss of his lads jolly money as his ‘idiot tax’ or more likely ‘selfish bastard who thought he could manipulate his wife tax’

yep the moneys gone. Gone like the hope the op had that he might put his family first for once by not canceling himself from a family trip for a jolly with friends, gone like the respect she had for him.

@JDIMum shocking he hasn't apologised. I really feel for you.

I'd say if he hasn't sorted it out by Friday then he can go find a bed to sleep on at one of his mate's houses. Not on, it's a fuck up that could be sorted in thirty minutes by booking a new flight. He knows he's in the wrong. I'd not want anything to do with him until he's sorted it out. Why are so many men so so shit?

It’s not so much the holiday thing it’s the entire way of behaving and thinking that her husband has done and shown CLEARLY he gives not a crap about his wife or his children just himself!!! Another selfish narcissist man treating his wife like another appliance!

Line your ducks up op and get all your paperwork and HIS especially!! In order as this isn’t just a one off display of his selfishness is it?

I don't want to embarrass you further but that's your own, fevered narrative you've shoehorned in. If you'd like to discreetly clear away your soap box I'll help you. I didn't suggest that you being full of yourself had anything to do with people having expectations of anyone else. It was about you, personally, arrogantly claiming to know the full character and history of someone from a few internet posts. Enough even to champion life-altering decisions safe in the comfort that you won't have to experience their fall-out.

Thank you for your little autobiography but it's entirely irrelevant.

Love that you think I’m the one that should be embarrassed 😂. What single event/sequence of behaviour would it take for you to feel differently about your husband? An affair? Discovery of hidden debts? Or would you just put up with anything? Sometimes you don’t need to know the entire life history to make a judgement. I’m sure OP’s not an idiot, she won’t base her decision based on what a bunch of strangers on mumsnet say to her, but I can and have said what I would think in the same situation.

I actually have a lot more respect for the posters saying it just wouldn’t bother them at all. I don’t feel the same, but fair enough. It’s the posters agreeing that it’s shitty, selfish behaviour but then ‘hey, what can you do? It’s his decision, you’ll just have to get over it’. Doormats the lot of them.

Before we declare this marriage over can we not just put ourselves in the husband's shoes, just for a minute or so? He's inadvertently double-booked two activities that both mean a lot to him, and it's all down to his own absent-mindedness. He wouldn't be human if he didn't feel cheesed off with himself, and sometimes those feelings come out sideways. Obviously the right thing to do is to drop out of the lads trip and go to the festival, but is there any reason (besides 'he's a man') to think that he won't reach that conclusion once he's finished kicking himself? If I were in his shoes my mates would 100% tell me to go to the festival and have an amazing time with the family; there'll always be other lads trips. This whole thing might pan out the same way.

Indeed. I hope these kinds of women don’t have children or young people who look up to them. Awful role models for the next generation.

What’s taking him so long do you think? Making his wife unhappy and their plans in limbo?

Gosh - you are cynical! I hope this is not because someone has treated you badly in the past.

My birthday is 15th June. Back in 1991 i turned 18 I had a party for my 18th booked in a hall but it had to be booked on the 29th June as it was the only night the hall was available. My now late dad would never have dreamed of pissing off somewhere else just because it wasnt technically my birthday on the party day. And yet you always get the agist fuckers on here swearing blind that older generations of men were more sexist. Ive found the opposite to be true

No idea, never met the guy, but stubbornness might be a part of it. I mean, he could just be a complete arse, but 99% of people aren't complete arses, so the odds are on his side from that point of view. Besides which, if he was a complete arse it wouldn't be taking him so long; he'd have chosen the lads in a heartbeat.

Truth be told I haven’t spoken to my husband but he has also not spoken to me, not apologised & not made an effort to fix his fk up! A

is he generally like this in disagreements? Generally thoughtless and selfish?

As MN love to say - ask me how I know...

But I was younger then and I know better now!