Anonymous wrote:Sounds like you have much bigger problems than just this trip. Any husband who bullies his wife just to throw his weight around has serious issues that need to be addressed.

But as for the trip, you don't have to do something just because he says it. You do know that, right?

This. And just out of curiosity, is this India?

You need to stop enabling his childish behavior.

I couldn't stand a month-long trip to another country to stay with my wife's aging relatives. Why does it have to be so long?

He's going to ruin this trip if he's already started now.

It takes two to play this game. Stop playing.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Stop being a marytr. You don't have to do any of that. Tell him he can stay home if he wants and you will go without him. He sounds like a pita and you'd probably have more fun without him there anyway.

Ha! If I dump him on this month-long trip, I might as well dump him for good. Trying to find something a little less extreme.
And the thing is, he will probably really enjoy all the things we've planned - futuristic concept car shows and robotics demonstrations, playrooms of the latest electronic gadgets, math and science museums etc. Right up his alley. He just enjoys having a tantrum beforehand. PITA is right.

Maybe that's for the best? At the risk of taking this too seriously, you should consider counseling. It doesn't appear that your DH is engaging in healthy behaviors for a marriage.

The statement in bold says exactly what I thought. OP, you refer to your husband as "bullying me with yelling and threats instead of trying to convince me to change our plans to something else - because he doesn't really want something else, he just wants to throw his weight around. Not acceptable."

But you ARE accepting that behavior by caving in and doing extra research to convince him. Is this a larger pattern in your marriage? He's a control freak so you have to put up with tantrums, and eventually if you do enough kowtowing to his misgivings and present enough evidence to him (as if he's a judge), he'll grudgingly do what was already discussed, budgeted and approved by you both?

That is not how grown-ups act in a marriage. I can't quite believe that if he acts like this about the trip, he doesn't do it about other things, though maybe on a smaller scale. Big picture: There's problem with his behaviors that goes beyond this one example, isn't there?
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It's very telling that you say, jokingly, that if you ditch him for this trip you might as well ditch him for good. If he's this rigid and demanding, you are going to deal with this over and over and not just about this trip. He bullies, yells and threatens -- your words. Stop trying to placate him with new travel data because it will never be good enough. Tell him that the trip was already given the green light, by you both, and that's the end of it, and that you have scheduled your first couples therapy meeting for next week because....that's the big picture here.

get him a guidebook to the country (from the library, if you want). Tell him to pick [whatever number you want] things in the city you're visiting that he wants to do--restaurant, shop, walking tour, laying on the beach, a night in a cool hotel, museum, whatever. He can also find something online if he wants to research there. Tell him that if he gives you [whatever time is reasonable] you will make absolutely every effort to incorporate them into the trip. Then leave it in his hands. If he doesn't choose, he doesn't do. It sounds like there's a good chance you will already have planned to go to some of the places he'll pick.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Stop being a marytr. You don't have to do any of that. Tell him he can stay home if he wants and you will go without him. He sounds like a pita and you'd probably have more fun without him there anyway.

Ha! If I dump him on this month-long trip, I might as well dump him for good. Trying to find something a little less extreme.
And the thing is, he will probably really enjoy all the things we've planned - futuristic concept car shows and robotics demonstrations, playrooms of the latest electronic gadgets, math and science museums etc. Right up his alley. He just enjoys having a tantrum beforehand. PITA is right.

Wow, where are you going? It sounds fantastic! I'll go if your DH won't.

Sounds like you have much bigger problems than just this trip. Any husband who bullies his wife just to throw his weight around has serious issues that need to be addressed.

But as for the trip, you don't have to do something just because he says it. You do know that, right?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Stop being a marytr. You don't have to do any of that. Tell him he can stay home if he wants and you will go without him. He sounds like a pita and you'd probably have more fun without him there anyway.

Ha! If I dump him on this month-long trip, I might as well dump him for good. Trying to find something a little less extreme.
And the thing is, he will probably really enjoy all the things we've planned - futuristic concept car shows and robotics demonstrations, playrooms of the latest electronic gadgets, math and science museums etc. Right up his alley. He just enjoys having a tantrum beforehand. PITA is right.

Maybe that's for the best? At the risk of taking this too seriously, you should consider counseling. It doesn't appear that your DH is engaging in healthy behaviors for a marriage.

It's a once in 7 year trip. This is part of marriage. He gets to decide whether he wants to participate or not, but when he got married, things like this became implicit. He can choose not to participate and you should disinvite him if he is going to put a damper on all the fun stuff you have planned.

And to be blunt, family will die and in reality, there may be no need for this trip 7 years from now. Now is the time.

"However I resent that I'm putting myself into this position where I have to make the extra effort,..."

Actually, no. You don't have to do this. He can act like a baby if he wants to. But you don't have to provide "proof" of anything. Seriously.

Anonymous wrote:Stop being a marytr. You don't have to do any of that. Tell him he can stay home if he wants and you will go without him. He sounds like a pita and you'd probably have more fun without him there anyway.

Ha! If I dump him on this month-long trip, I might as well dump him for good. Trying to find something a little less extreme.
And the thing is, he will probably really enjoy all the things we've planned - futuristic concept car shows and robotics demonstrations, playrooms of the latest electronic gadgets, math and science museums etc. Right up his alley. He just enjoys having a tantrum beforehand. PITA is right.

Stop being a marytr. You don't have to do any of that. Tell him he can stay home if he wants and you will go without him. He sounds like a pita and you'd probably have more fun without him there anyway.

We are fortunate to be able to afford a trip to the other side of the world, to visit family we haven't seen in 7 years.
My father was planning this trip, since he speaks the language and I don't. I thought he had worked out a reasonable balance of visiting family and sightseeing, and we were just about to make our reservations.

But... DH is having one of his moments, probably because he's a control freak and can't control this, not knowing the country at all. He declared family visits boring: hello - we've seen his family more often. He hates urban settings: this where my family lives, plus there are top-notch museums and amusement parks and my father has already included a side trip to a beautiful part of the countryside. DH wants to spend as little as possible and is threatening to veto the whole thing and not go: we had already gone over our budget and agreed that we could afford all of this and that it was important for the children to meet their great-grandparents. The point is, he's bullying me with yelling and threats instead of trying to convince me to change our plans to something else - because he doesn't really want something else, he just wants to throw his weight around. Not acceptable.

So I have to drop everything, and goodness know I have a ton of stuff to do right now, to look into the nitty-gritty of sightseeing attractions and travel logistics so that I can prove to him that there really are interesting things to do in this city, and that we don't have better options for the logistics. My father has told him all this, but apparently I need to spend hours doing extra research to shove it in his face again, and hope it will go down better coming from me. However I resent that I'm putting myself into this position where I have to make the extra effort, and not DH - we neither of us speak the language and I will have to parse through English travel websites or native translations just like he would need to. He should be making this effort, but I know he would really refuse to go rather than sit down and pore through travel websites. What an idiot.

OK, if I'm spending valuable time on this, he'll have to pick up the slack somewhere else, like make dinner AND wash up AND do laundry or something. No coming home from work and vegging out.