Dh didn't tell me about MIL 9h round trip just to have lunch with him

[Icannotwriteonit]

My ILs live 4-5h away, up north.

Dh usually wfh everyday except Tuesday, and i wfh on Tuesdays only. Yesterday morning he spontaneously announced he was wfh and going into the office on Wednesday instead, so I decamped all my stuff onto the dining table to let him use the home office corner, and did the drop offs as I usually do on Tuesday. But we got to have lunch together in the local caff which was nice, a rare child free moment together.

This morning I phoned my MIL because I wanted to tell her about something to do with DS, and also check that DH had told her about our Christmas plans. She says "oh he mentioned briefly, but I'll be seeing him later anyway". "What, seeing Ben? Today?" Yes, she says she's just getting on the tube on her way to lunch with him, didn't he mention it? Er, no he didn't... She says she's only in London for lunch. Because she barely gets any time alone with him.

What has thrown me is a) why wouldn't he mention that is mum is doing a lovely but eccentric 9h round trip just to have lunch with him, why keep that a secret and b) we are visiting the ILs for half term soon, so surely lots of opportunities for chats?

I texted dh "why didn't you tell me you were seeing your mum for lunch today" and he replied he didn't want to mention it in front of the kids because they'd be sad not to see Granny themselves. But we had loads of child free time yesterday, and he didn't think to mention it, he just made small talk about diesel and the weather and the Holborn by election. No "oh by the way im seeing my mum tomorrow". If he had, id have replied "ah that's so nice of her, don't forget to mention Christmas".

I feel like they both think that I keep him a prisoner or something? He goes out to see his mates of an evening sometimes, and he has lunch with various people, I never stop him from any of that or even ask questions about who he sees, there was no need to keep it a secret.

I now don't want to go up north for half term, I wish he'd just go alone with the kids if I'm so in the way. But the kids would miss me, DS is only 2.

I'm a bit upset, please talk me out of this, mumsnet

Surely you can see her reaction to the situation is because he made it a secret. He changed his working days, deliberately chose to not mention the catch up and came up with some feeble excuse using the kids as an excuse for lying.

In a normal relationship it would be mentioned in casual conversation and the OP would have said that's nice have fun, here's some suggestions of places to eat if you want.

Pretending her reaction is why he didn't tell her is disingenuous.

I guess he didn't tell her that he hadn't told me. A sort of secret-squared. Ugh.

I think if far more likely he simply forgot all about it. I find it extraordinary that you immediately leap to secrecy and lies and consequences rather than assuming he forgot. I presume there is more going on in your marriage to make you take this approach.

I've had conversations with dh where I tell him his niece is pregnant/whatever and he says "oh yeah Joe told me Tuesday - did I not tell you?" On Tuesday he may well have spend a good while over dinner talking about politics or science or history. He isn't being secretive or lying. What he pops up to the front of his mind as conversation is sometimes different to what I would have pop to the front of my mind.

But like I said, your dh probably has form for secrets and lies.

I can't explain, he's just discreet to an extreme extent. He doesn't mention stuff unless you "need" to know. But in extended families, it's normal to mention stuff like one family member seeing another.

That's part of the emotional intimacy of marriage, in my view. You mention stuff. Just like "I'm thinking of going for that promotion" or "my toe has fallen off" or "my mum is doing a 9h round trip just to have lunch with me alone"

So DH has form for this kind of behaviour. What happens when you confront him with it? Does he pretend he simply forgot to tell you/didn’t think it was important?

It sounds as if you have an issue with his seeing his mother alone. That's coming across loud and clear. You've taken it as a personal slight which is just bizarre to me. He's allowed to see his mother. He's allowed not to invite you.

I agree the blame should be with the DH, not the MIL.

But not sure about the disproportionate reaction. He didn't tell her about this (despite it being big enough for him to announce a last-minute WFH change), he said he forgot (which is unlikely), and MIL made a comment about not getting enough alone time with him.

It's very hard not to read all of those things as a message that they'd like more alone time without her. And so OP is responding to that message by giving them more alone time.

I don't know. I think I'd behave the same in this scenario, so anything she's being accused of, I think I would be too. I'd see this as a message / problem, see an obvious solution, and want to enact it in order to feel like something had improved / been solved. I guess if DH / MIL react to OP's plan with 'oh no, we'd miss you, please come!' then she'll realise she got it wrong. But if they don't do that, it's probably that she's got it right. So I guess she'll know soon.

Yeah I get this, but I'm the same, I don't gossip about other people's pregnancies, or imminent divorces, or anything like that. Not even to dh. I am very discreet about other people's health or business. Truly.

I didn't think this eccentric round trip would fall into that category.

Ok, so you have a DH who keeps secrets, and that's a problem.

You like ILs, but don't like visiting them. Understandable I don't like staying on anyone else's home.

Despite that you had agreed to go and now want to change that because of DH's lies which MIL is inadvertently tied up in, and other reasons but the trigger was the lying.

As MIL I'd be feeling absolutely dreadful to be 'causing' all this trouble after I'd tried to do a nice thing (I bet she paid!) and spend some time with DS without impinging on his family time.

Work out what the hell it is with DH and the lying and plan for shorter trips or for DH to take DC without you in future.

I'd say the problem then is a basic mismatch in what he thinks is appropriate information sharing. I'm with you. I couldn't care less if DH goes to see his mum and I actively encourage him to spend lots of time with her 1-2-1. But I absolutely would be hurt if he had a big plan to take her to theatre or somethign and he didn't mention it to me and actiovely seemed to allow me to believe he was somewhere else entirely. eg if he cancelled a work day to do it but just didn't mention it. That doesn't exactly scream, "we're in a partnership".

ETA: it feels dishonest. Even if he doesn't see it that way.

this is really concerning that already, you’ve taken your overreaction and caused further issues.

it should have just been left as your husband is having lunch with his mum and you will see her in half term as planned.

god forbid she is having a private word with him about something that doesn’t concern you; he now doesn’t have a safe space to come home to and process it.

It’s weird she came so far for lunch and weird it was secret. I’m guessing there’s something they don’t want you involved it. As PP said a medical appointment, something to do with the investments you mentioned, she’s secretly planning on leaving FIL.

Exactly this. I often encourage my DH to get in touch with or go and visit his parents, I try and mix giving them alone time and also visiting.
But I expect him not to have random pointless secrets from me.

I agree that it’s odd he didn’t tell and I can see why that bothers her.

I don’t think it’s disingenuous to propose he might have reason not to tell her, given her quite extreme reaction. It might not be the first time she has overreacted to something.

Or he might be a lying arse. Who knows?

You haven’t been punished though. What has his mother done wrong?

Your DH had lunch with his mother. His mother told you about it. You don’t have much in common with the them and wouldn’t have wanted to go. DH either forgot to tell you or didn’t mention it intentionally. Either way, everyone’s happy with the outcome so what’s the problem?

If your issue is that you think he’s lying and intentionally didn’t tell you, then ask him why.

The fact that MIL told you means it is DH that has an issue. He got you to change something for him on the back of this meeting, it's weird he didn't mention it. I'd be really upset/cross/suspicious if my DH did this. What else does he fail to mention?

Yes, I would agree.
There were travel plans made in less than a fortnight's time that would allow for a son-Mum lunch when you were due to stay with the ILs. You were put on the spot a bit to juggle your work (with the WFH change) and the 2yr old DS's movements that one or other parent has to be responsible for, because of a pre-lunch on 'That Day'. Not that much was affected, but it looks as if DH was attempting to go under the radar because his work hours covered the lunch.

You also took yourself out of work dates for your own meeting to be able to yoke into what was convenient for the family and ILs, but with more foresight than trying it on the day before. If this means that you want to prioritise your individual work needs now, and that it leads you to being honest thinking that the work meeting is more appealing to you than the full length trip would have been, then I'm not hugely surprised.

Offering some support! My husband and I have been together 15 years with 3 kids. We’re best friends and tell each other everything. We of course coordinate our schedules and share if we’re meeting up with anyone - every day we share how it went and what our upcoming plans are. It would be majorly odd to change our schedule and not mentioned we are meeting up with someone who is travelling a long way. Remember there will be lots of people giving advice who haven’t been in a very long term successful relationship (may be newly married, miserably married, happily divorced - you name it). So the ones who say it’s weird to care about this may have a very different approach to life and success to the one you have.

Yes. Maybe he feels you would overreact/react nastily to him seeing his mum? There's so many stories/posts of women having a problem with MILs, that maybe he is worried?
Maybe just say to him it's great he's seeing her, and that it's important for people to have a good relationship with their parents and sometimes see them when they're not just in grandma role, and he'll be more willing to tell you in future.

He didn't lie to you. He didn't keep a secret.

Deceit by omission

I was going to say something like this.

I have a son and hope that, once he is married, we still get to hang out just the two of us sometimes. Not because I have intense, important things to discuss - perhaps I will have some cat videos I want to share with him.

BUT it would be weird if he hid / omitted to mention that he was seeing me. I hope that it would be okay to say “Mum is coming to meet me for lunch on Tuesday. Hope it’s okay that it’s just going to be the two of us. Not sure if there’s something she wants to talk about”. Then afterwards he could say “Yeah, she was fine. She talked to me about a new species of cat that someone’s found”.

From the way the OP writes, I wonder if she is often expected to be accommodating and helpful (like moving out of the home office and going up north for a week) but often isn’t communicated with very well.

&And right now I'm not feeling particularly affectionate towards MIL at all.*

Why "right now"? The only thing that changed is she didn't keep a secret.

Well I’ve been happily married for 40 years and know that people keep secrets for good and bad reasons. Ask him, OP. Don’t accept the answer of “I forgot”.

I find it VERY odd that he didn’t tell you - there’s no way he ‘forgot’ .. he changed his wfh day, he knew when he went out with you that the following day he was going out with his mum (who has travelled 4.5hrs to do this) 😵‍💫😵‍💫
I don’t think you sound controlling at all. I would be very uneasy about the secrecy of it. It would play on my mind, and probably cause an argument/words due to this, whereas if I’d been told beforehand I wouldn’t have batted an eyelid 🤷‍♀️

I think you’re really overreacting OP. His mum wanted to see her son, I don’t see the big deal? Why would you always need to be invited to see in-laws? My mum often wants to catch up with me and I don’t invite my DH (tbh he wouldn’t want to come all the time anyway!). And my husband occasionally goes out for lunch with his parents during the week and it’s never occurred to me to be upset about it. I don’t see the big deal at all.

If I found out two people close to me were meeting up and slightly avoided telling me, I would be questioning and doubting myself as to why they chose to avoid telling me. Am I more aggressive in myself than I realised, and they want to quietly avoid telling me?

Then you are trying to whip up a reaction to it on a random website, trying to make them look like the baddies without the self-awareness to realise half the audience will be thinking it makes you look bad, not them.

Then you are planning to rearrange half-term as some kind of petty vengiance.

I'm only reading your POV here, not theirs. Your telling of the story makes you look like the villain.

I agree with you that your DH not telling you is deliberate rather than some kind of accident.