Husband breaking my trust
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Anonymous
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We are working parents with young kids, and we recently spent many hours trying to find a more balanced split of responsibilities. He offered to do pickup from daycare each day since I do dropoff and make dinner.
We agreed that he would leave by 5:30 - this is already later than I did pickup, and only leaves us like 15 minutes for family dinner, which is the only time we have as a whole family all day. He proposed this approach. At 5:00, I confirmed with him that he would leave no later than 5:30, that this was a hard stop for work, and he said "Of course." Well, come 5:30, he is still on the phone with his boss, because the boss will be busy for the next few days, so he says 5 more minutes. At 5:35, he is still on the phone. I check in, he's like "I'm finishing up." At 5:40, he is walking out, still trying to finish up with his boss on the phone. I got extremely upset. He said "Sorry, but it was important". I told him that I can't trust anything he says. I basically have to hope and pray each day that something doesn't come up at work, never knowing which day he might just ignore what we agreed on, miss family dinner, upset our little kid who hates being picked up late, annoy the daycare teachers , make our older kid late for her activity. Basically, his boss controls our family life. He said I'm overreacting and it's not like he's cheating, so it's not breaking trust. And can't I focus on the fact that most days he gets out by 5:30? He has a history of breaking promises and putting work first, always working longer than he tells me. I have a history of anxious attachment from my family of origin. However, I really think that I'm not being unreasonable here. Because I can't trust him on bigger things if even these smaller promises mean so little to him. If he can't commit to leaving at 5:30, he should own up to it. If he thought he could do it, but now realizes it's only possible 80% of the time, he could say "Hey, I'm sorry I overcommitted. Are you okay with doing pickup at short notice when I'm stuck on the phone? Or let's look into hiring someone to drive our kid home? How can I communicate all this to him? Or am I totally wrong here? |
Anonymous
| You are overreacting |
Anonymous
| Look, this will make you crazy. If he does pickup, all pickup consequences are his and you don’t check in or monitor it. But if family dinner is important to you, then it looks like this won’t work, so he should take dropoff and you do pickup. Or you keep the plan as it is and do family breakfast together instead. |
Anonymous
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You are NOT overreacting. His inability to leave work early materially impacts three other people's schedules every weekday apart from his own, and creates a lot of stress for the family. That is not OK!
Is this the kind of workplace where he can pick his hours? What have other similarly situated colleagues done? He shouldn't forego promotion chances, future earnings and credibility in his field if he sticks to a hard end-of-day cut-off, but it's hard to tell from here how much flexibility he has in that particular workplace with that particular boss. What other options do you have, if your husband can't do pick-ups? You can't sacrifice your career either. Does the daycare have extended hours? Could you swing an au-pair or nanny, that cares for both kids? Does the older child absolutely need that activity she's late to? Reliable drivers are unicorns, by the way. They're called au pairs, or nannies. Reliable part-time nannies who won't flake on you are very hard to find. Drivers, nearly impossible. I'm sorry, OP. This is unfortunately a very common, and very stressful, situation. |
Anonymous
| So he's 10 min past the time you agreed on and this doesn't happen all the time? You are majorly overreacting. |
Anonymous
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I feel sorry for this guy.
I am exhausted just reading this and the poor guy has to live with this. |
Anonymous
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He is a dumb*as for agreeing to 5:30. He needs to do what women all over the world do and put his family first.
Having said that, he isn't gonna change, so you need to assign him a different task instead. |
Anonymous
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Why can't he get in the car while on the phone?
But yes, you're overreacting and seem like a micromanager |
Anonymous
| Sounds like he DGAF about dinner, the daycare teachers, and the kid activity. Men do what's important to them, that's the bottom line. |
Anonymous
This. And she's calling or texting him continually throughout the process. Holy smokes. I thought this was going to be a post about how he never leaves on time. And it turns out that he usually does, but was 10 minutes late one day, and still did pickup. And the reason is because he didn't hang up on his boss, who was going to be unavailable for several days. Op, you seriously need to chill. |
Anonymous
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You can't survive with that tight of a schedule, that's the problem here, OP. An average commute will have maybe a 30-minute variability, even when you leave work at exactly the same time each day. Why is family dinner 15 minutes? What's happening after? The kids' bedtimes? They do need their sleep.
Maybe you need to forget about family dinners for a while. Your kids are young, they won't remember anyway. You can have them eat first, bedtime, then you two have dinner later. This is how a lot of working families with young kids do it. He can't do drop-offs instead? Is your career on the back-burner because of daycare constraints? |
Anonymous
OP said he was in his car at 540. So 10 whole minutes. It isn't a big deal. |
Anonymous
| How often is this actually happening? |
Anonymous
I feel the same. How do you react when things actually go wrong? Your marriage is t going to survive if you are so over reactive. |
Anonymous
| Lady, stay home if you can’t get it together. And if you are only spending 15 minutes together as a family, then you aren’t spreading enough time with your child. One of you needs to stay home with the child because the two of you working is too much. |