Any woman who thought I actually needed her permission would never wind up my wife.
Having said that, I do understand a lasting relationship requires tradeoffs. I’m just not willing to make very many of them. But I wouldn’t demand any more out of a woman in this area than I’m willing to give back. For example, if I think I should be allowed to go to a strip club now and then, I won’t complain if my (possible future) wife wants to go see Chippendale’s dancers. (But fooling around with the dancers is on another level entirely.)
Eva Luna, your ex sounds emotionally immature at best, and a nutcase at worst. Good riddance.
My only possible objection to this would be because my husband works out of town all week. So if he went on a weekend trip with his buddies, it would mean the kids and I wouldn’t see him for two weeks. OTOH, if the trip wasn’t really important to him, he would never even approach the subject, he’d just tell them “no”. If it was important, I wouldn’t dream of stopping him (or trying to stop him); I would ask that he clear the following weekend for something fun for the family, though. Oh, and we’d talk about the budget and how much money he could comfortably spend, too.
My husband just got back from a golfing week at Myrtle Beach with about 15 other guys. God knows what they got into down there; I don’t care, as long as he doesn’t bring anything nasty home with him.
I’m leaving Thursday for 12 days in Spain. I’m looking forward to having the time to myself and doing what I want.
Now that the kids are teenagers, it doesn’t bother me a bit for him to go off without me, but when they were young I didn’t like being stuck with all the child care for days on end when he was gone.
I think in a good relationship, there’s an understanding about how much time and when you’re going to be apart.
If I went fishing last weekend, hunting the weekend before, to Vegas the weekend before, golfing the weekend before, my wife would not be happy that I went cross-state in a bus with the guys this upcoming weekend. And I wouldn’t dream of “asking”. If you would even want to go after ditching her for 4 weeks straight, you need to ask yourself why you’re even married.
OTOH, if I’d been to my mother-in-law’s for knittting parties for the last month, it’s a different story. . .she’d understand that I’m ready for a guy’s weekend and she wouldn’t ask me not to go.
If I wanted to go, she couldn’t “stop” me. But that’s not a question of whether she’d give me permission. It’s a question of just how big of an asshole I’m comfortable being. Marriage isn’t a game of getting away with everything you possibly can up until the divorce point.
You have an understanding that you’re going to spend some time with each other, and that your each might want to spend some time apart. There’s no permission asked or given. It’s just a question of how out of balance it’s going to put you.
If these guys in the OP are really in the position where they’ve spent 3 months making trips to Bed, Bath & Beyond and checking things off the “honey-d0” list, I’d hope their wive’s would respect their wishes.
I have many times witnessed men claiming that their wives “won’t let” them do something, when the truth is that the men themselves don’t want to do whatever it is, and blame their wives rather than admit this. It happens a LOT.
My husband takes boys-only trips from time to time, and I take girls-only trips sometimes, too. It’s all good.
It’s a great idea. I’d suggest some easy to promise rules: “no hookers”, and a budget limitation, which if he is easily tempted can secured by “no plastic -cash only” rule, with some agreed upon amount, plus tuck a little extra for him where he’ll find it.
Personally, I used to take those kinds of trips- they either involved fishing, crude humor and drinking (all guys): or (mostly guys) staying up for an entire weekend playing D&D and eating hwaaaaay too much junk food. Neither of which my SO wanted to do. She went away for a needleworking convention for example, which apparently also had quite a bit of drinking and “girl talk” after hours. It’s all good.
My husband goes hunting a couple of times a year with a group of guys and I have no problem with it.
I’m interested in what kind of lies these guys told their wives. Do they get away with it? Did they say they were doing something else? IMO, that’s even worse. If they get caught, it makes them seem guilty of doing something they might not have been doing, like covering up for hookers or girlfriends.
BiblioCat, he’s never said what kind of lies they’d tell for a weekend, but the Saturday morning breakfasts are “Union Meetings.” :rolleyes: He told me this before we lived together. The first time he had an actual union meeting I laughed so hard, I almost peed myself. He was not amused. I can’t count the number of times he’s mumbled, “I tell you entirely too much.” walking away.
He didn’t get back last night until nearly 1:00 AM, because Snoqualimie pass was closed for four hours. The sat in traffic the whole time. He was exhausted. He said the whole trip was a bit of a culture shock for him. He said he wouldn’t ever do that again.
I told him he’d better find some friends he’d like to spend tme with, or I’ll be putting him on a bus to Portland when he least expects it.
If Mr. Neville wanted to do something like this, I’d be surprised (drinking and gambling really isn’t his thing), but I wouldn’t have a problem with it unless he was going away a lot (several times a month) on this sort of trip. He goes on trips with his brothers sometimes, and goes to astronomy conferences without me, and it’s not a big deal. But our relationship is kind of low-maintenance, and we like it that way.
If he wanted to meet up with some buddies for breakfast on a weekend, my second question would be, “Do I have to go too, or can I stay home and sleep in?”. My first would, of course, be, “Who are you and what have you done with Mr. Neville, you evil morning person?”
That’s why I’d be afraid to lie if I was doing it - I’d get caught. I’d get stuck in traffic and be unable to explain the delay or have an accident and have to explain what I was doing one place when I said I was someplace else.
Mr. Ujest routinely goes on what we refer to as Brokeback Mountain Duck Hunting weekends. He has a good time and it doesn’t cost much. He’s had about 25 or so weekends with the guys in our marriage ( mostly hunting the rest were concerts.) He has never shot a duck and they really don’t get drunk either, so naturally, they have to be having some kind of illicit forbiddeness going on.
I’ve had zero. Not because he doesn’t want me to go. He is all for it. I can’t find any female who will get away for the weekend that I actually want to go somewhere with who doesn’t drive me batshit insane with kid-talk or scrapbooking talk ( or My Husband is a Lazy Jerk talk.)
Look, I just like to bullshit all weekend long. No husband talk. No kid talk. Just mindless bullshit, movies, yarn stores and antiqueing/garage saleing, museums and at least one decent meal and miniminal fast food. God, I’m picky.
ME! Pick me! I’ll go! I can’t talk “yarn” but I’d love to go away and go antiqueing, museuming, and not eat fast food. Can we drink?
No talk of husbands and kids. No scrapbooking allowed.
The only objection I could see would be due to finances. Other than that, I don’t see anything wrong with it. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anything less appealing than riding around on a bus though, but that must be a guy thing.
My husband goes away on golf outings that I’m usually not interested in. I went on a cruise last year with a bunch of friends, and might do it again next year.
I think women have less of a problem with this kind of thing than some men do.
My GF got made when I would sneak off with my pals for a guys weekend. So I just tell her where we go and she doesn’t care. The catch is for every guy vacation, there has to be a trip with just the two of us.
Great points. I don’t like talk about adults “letting” their SO’s do things. I also don’t like the attitudes that a lot of women seem to have that they are the rule-setters in the relationship, and their husbands have no say in anything other than, “Yes, dear.” My husband is my partner, as I am his. No one is making rules for anyone else around here. We both voluntarily choose not to do things that we know the other person doesn’t want us to do.
Would I “let” my husband go on a drunken weekend with the boys? Absolutely. Would he want to go? 'Nother question altogether.
Can we have FemmeDope somewhere equidistant from all of us?
It’s all good.