Does vacation intensify preexisting issues, or should it make things better?

[Anonymous]

Your husband is a man-baby who is acting like a child who needs you to plan his day, think ahead and get him snacks, etc. I think he got hangry and then is a stubborn jackass who can't admit when he is wrong. He is basically my 3yr old.

Vacation brings out annoyances my husband and I have with each other, mostly because at home we have a really good routine. When it's just us, we're an awesome team. Once you throw his family in the mix, it's like he isn't an adult anymore and doesn't think about what our kids want and need (naps, dinner before 8pm) and doesn't think ahead and speak up to his parents to say "that doesn't work for us" or "lets talk about the plan for tomorrow".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your dh sounds incompetent and childish. I assume he manages to be an adult at work, why can't he do that at home too?

Yes and no. He can be pretty difficult to work with but he's one of the most successful people they have (commission based work), so his attitude hasn't really come back to bite him. He does have a reputation of being a complainer but ultimately he gets results so they have kind of a hands off mentality with him. He is very competent when it comes to work so they put up with it. The issue with that is that it reinforces that his behavior is ok and ultimately he usually gets what he wants so there's no motivation to change the behavior.

I did have a talk a few months ago with him about this and said that I can't continue to live like this and ultimately it's unfair to DS. I gave him a chance to make changes and I recommended he get into counseling to explore why he felt the need to put others down to make himself feel better. He promised to improve and did for a tiny bit of time but now it's back to normal. When we get home I will sit down with him and explain that his behavior is negatively affecting our family so he can either take concrete steps to make changes or we need to at least temporarily separate.

This makes me nervous because he can be very vindictive, especially about money, when he wants to be. There are joint accounts but I don't have easy access to them so it is quite possible he would move joint money into other accounts. How do I get my ducks in a row before tipping him off?
-OP

Talk to a lawyer. Seriously. They will help you protect yourself without crossing any legal lines you might not know about. It might seem premature to you, but a little time spent preparing can save you so much time and money later. Oh, and a lawyer won't tell you whether to separate/divorce/stay married. They will help you know how to protect yourself if you decide you want to separate.

[Anonymous]

You don't "recommend" he get counseling. You say, "We are going to couples counseling because I can't live the way we have been living this. Here is the counselor I have found--we can try this one and see if it works and find another counselor if we don't click with this person. I am going to make an appointment and expect you to show up. Let me know a couple times in the next two weeks that are workable for you."

You don't temporarily separate or threaten to do so without seriously going to marriage counseling. Come on! You have a kid! Separation is a MAJOR step and if you pose it as "temporary" he will feel no pressure to change since, after all, it is only "temporary."

Your spouse may have untreated depression. People think that depression is just moping around but when I had it, my major symptom was extreme irritability. Your spouse may be deeply unhappy and unsatisfied in his life. If this is the case, simply saying "behave better" is not going to help. Maybe he is being a dick but presumably you loved something about this man in order to father a child with him.

And you are kidding yourself if you think he is the only one who needs to change his behavior. You need to change too. You need to be much more direct and clear about specific things that need to happen and you need to follow through. Just the fact that you have "joint" accounts that you can't access speaks volumes as to how you have been acting in this relationship. Usually people choose marriage partners that are at the same emotional level as themselves. You need to take a serious look at yourself and go to individual counseling. You and your spouse are in a dynamic and if one individual unilaterally changes, that forces change in the other person.

[Anonymous]

How do you have a joint account and no access too? What if you need to transfer money to it from your own account or check the balance before the mortgage comes out of it? If you have no access too and he controls it all, then it really isn't a joint account.

[Anonymous]

OP, I had to reread your post to make sure I hadn't posted it in my sleep. We also just got back from a similar week of bickering and snark and I am just about done. The only thing I would add is that he still expects me to put out after a long day of just saying "Yes dear" bc he's going to yell either way. Umm, no.
I just can't bring myself to actually take the step of calling an attorney bc "then it's real." Which I realize is stupid. I am holding on to the idea thst some major personal stress (100% real) is causing DH to be a jacka$$. Either he'll snap out of it or he won't. No advice at all, just commiseration.

[Anonymous]

Vacations were stressful with my XH. It magnified the problems already there. If you can't enjoy time together, your companionship is crumbling. Maybe beyond repair, maybe not. That is a choice you and your husband must make and agree to. Or not.

Lots of red flags though that this is headed down a bad path:
- Contempt
- Snarky
- Selfish
- One sided attempts at mitigating conflict

Sorry OP. Own your happy even if he is an ass. You can do that married or single.

[Anonymous]

Oh and not having access to "joint" accounts means that there is potentially financial abuse, power and control issues.

[Anonymous]

Vacations are always miserable

[Anonymous]

I am sorry OP. I don't have solutions. I would just suggest taking steps now. My DH was like this and he was harboring resentment that just got worse year after year. Having kids, living in the suburbs, my parents moving to live nearby. He wouldn't go to couples therapy because he said it was BS and so "suburban" and then criticism spiraled into name calling. He was also depressed and didn't take care of the depression and then his mental health plummeted when his dad died. It still took him 6 years to get help when it was affecting his work but at that point, he had decided the depression was due to these resentments so while he felt better, the marriage got worse. We are one year into marriage therapy and I am not sure if it will work. I vacillate between hope and despair. If we caught it in year 10 and started working on things perhaps we wouldn't be at this possibly unrecoverable point.

So I sympathize. It is awful. I am still stupid enough to hope he will snap out of it and apologize for all the things he said to me or be happy with his life so we can have a happy family. The kids are affected and that kills me more. So my advice is to do something now because it won't get better on its own.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Oh and not having access to "joint" accounts means that there is potentially financial abuse, power and control issues.

My DH was getting concerned about access to accounts because I handle all of the finances. So I keep a book with all of the passwords and showed him where I file all of the statements (including tax returns). It makes him feel more in control since he can log on whenever he wants to review statements. It is simple so you should ask for the same thing. If he resists that would be a red flag.

[Anonymous]

To the question of what happens on vacations, DH and I have had ups and downs for years and one of the things that's kept us on track is that we always travel well together. When away from daily stresses and obligations, we enjoy the same activities and enjoy each other.

To OP: As the 8 ball says, "Outlook not so good."

[Anonymous]

I think it is also important to look in the mirror. So many perfect women on here where 100% of every issue, every day is husbands fault. He is damned if he does or doesn't

Women who think they are saints who do nothing to sacrifice themselves, give 100%, bend over backwards to give their husbands the perfect wife, rarely if ever asks for anything in return...often have very little self awareness.

Anytime anyone sees the other person as the entire problem in a relationship dynamic, I want to hear the other side of the story to get a sense of the actual issues.

[Anonymous]

What? When did vacations become stressful? That is not normal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think it is also important to look in the mirror. So many perfect women on here where 100% of every issue, every day is husbands fault. He is damned if he does or doesn't

Women who think they are saints who do nothing to sacrifice themselves, give 100%, bend over backwards to give their husbands the perfect wife, rarely if ever asks for anything in return...often have very little self awareness.

Anytime anyone sees the other person as the entire problem in a relationship dynamic, I want to hear the other side of the story to get a sense of the actual issues.

OP here. I am absolutely not perfect. But I am not snarky or disrespectful and do not operate under a double standard as to what is acceptable for him and what is acceptable to me. I know I've contributed to the dynamic, by either being snarky back or standing up for myself in a way he considers to be unacceptable, and I'm working on letting his comments go instead of responding. But I also think that's a bad model to be setting for my child. So this dynamic has to change one way or another. I'm willing to do what I have to do to change it. But he has to as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DH and I are on a beach vacation this week with our 5 year old child. We have issues with bickering, but it seems so amplified this week. He is acting like a baby and pouting when he doesn't get everything to be his way, and he is just looking for things to blame on me.

Case in point--we had plans to go to an activity today which started at a specific time. We misjudged how much traffic there would be and got there super early. We were waiting to meet friends and we were 2 minutes away from my favorite store, which we don't have locally where we live. DH had mentioned that he thought we should eat before the activity but we had eaten breakfast 90 minutes prior and DS and I weren't hungry. I asked DH to drop me at the store. He got silent like he does when he's mad at me for something but dropped me at the store. He waited for me in the parking lot. There were multiple choices for food all around the store where he dropped me off. 20 minutes later I got in the car and DH was fuming mad but giving me the silent treatment. We got to the activity and he started complaining that he was hungry and I got to do what I wanted to do so I should be happy, but it was at the expense of him being able to eat. I told him he was free to get something to eat at any point. He didn't have to sit in the car the whole time. And he could have brought a snack with him if he thought he might get hungry when the rest of us weren't ready for a meal yet.

Anyway, for the rest of the day he's been pissy and making it seem like the whole day was about me. This was literally the only thing I've done for solely me this entire week. DH has had multiple times away from us to do things he wanted to do, so it's not like I got to do what I wanted to do and he didn't get any opportunities to do the same. He has had a lot of kid free time, and hasn't once offered for me to have any time to do something on my own. So I saw the opportunity and took it and now I'm paying for those 20 minutes where he was apparently wasting away from starvation.

I'd like to think this is just from being out of our routine, but we frequently have similar issues at home. Not specifically this example, but the dynamic is the same. I'm so sick of it and I'm miserable, and most importantly I don't want DS to be impacted by this dynamic between us. DH has no patience for DS either. We've had busy days and the kid is tired, but DH expects him to behave impeccably at a nice restaurant at the end of a long day. DH doesn't want to consider staying in because he likes to eat at nice restaurants on vacation.

If I don't have a perfect plan for the day then DH makes snarky comments at me and blames me for any glitches that occur. I had planned a day yesterday and had mapped out a fun restaurant to try which was on the water and would have been great for DS as it had a playground. It was right on our way back to our beach house. We got there and it was closed at that time which was different than the website hours. DH was so rude to me about it like I had planned it to happen that way.

I know this is kind of all over the place and it's more like venting, but does vacation exacerbate issues that are already there for you? After this week I don't have a desire to do this again, but I know DS loves the place we go so I'll suck it up for him. It just makes me sad that what is supposed to be fun is really not fun at all due to all of this. It's like DH can't be content unless he's putting me down.

Have you posted before (and do you have another post on the first page of the forum?)? Sounds like very similar behavior.

Yes, your husband is being an ass.

But how on earth will your husband know that he's being an ass and you are upset with him unless you *tell him*? Posting here won't help your situation. If you've tolerated this sort of behavior for the better part of the last decade, then he might get defensive when you bring it up now...after all these years. So, tread lightly.

Here's what I would have done:

"Hey, drop me off here so I can run into this store. I'll be back in 20 mins. Maybe you and Larla could pick up something to eat if you're hungry? I'll text you when I'm ready."