I think that people are reading a lot into this situation that might or might not be there in reality. You have no idea whether Foxy’s husband’s actions were the result of malicious forethought or forgetfulness or assitude or none of the above. Foxy, having lived with and been married to the guy for quite some time, probably has a better idea.
I mean, you’re essentially saying, “If I were in that situation, here’s why I would have done those things,” which is fine, but it wasn’t you in that situation.
You actually consider that to be a list of necessities? You don’t actually need anything but a change of diapers. The rest is just extraneous padding that the kid can live without for a trip to the mall. I’ve got plenty of experience. The only thing that actually matters is the diapers and wipes, and even an absence of wipes can be worked around (most public restrooms at least have toilet paper).
I guess for a baby, you might need to bring a bottle.
Anyway, the point is, that as lomg as your hysband gets the diapers in the bag, it doesn’t matter if he forgets one of the other things.
[ul][li]The “offer the money” dance is not a big deal. It’s a social convention. The child is invited, there’s an implicit offer to treat generally. In order not to make any assumptions, and to be polite, a counter-offer of financial assistance is made. This is the “annoying social dance” mentioned above. It’s also minor. It should not be a source of embarrassment or friction. Making the offer is a gracious gesture; failing to make the offer does not result in a Scarlet Letter.[/li]
[li]Presuming no offer of money, there is then an ambigious “quid pro quo” in the air. It doesn’t have to be the financial equivalent, because some families are better off than others. But an offer of a playdate, even homebound, would be appropriate.[/ul][/li]
All of that, I think, is a given, and no “mind-reading” on anyone’s part is required to evaluate the situation. However:
[ul][li]That the husband chose to acquiesce to the plan when face-to-face with the wife, but then disregard it later at the moment of actual fact, is of much greater concern than any of the above. The real question, though, is why he did what he did, and that is where mind-reading comes into play. There are a number of possibilities. If the general drift of the thread is correct, and the wife is a micromanaging control freak, then the husband may be feeling terribly henpecked and could be starting to engage in pathological conflict-avoidance behavior. This will ultimately be destructive to the marriage, and communication and compromise on both sides, but especially the wife will be required to avoid a meltdown. That situation is not beyond hope or repair. On the other hand, if he really is a passive-aggressive boob, and her micromanagement has been gradually but increasingly necessary to fill in the gaps of his incompetence, then things are never going to get any better and she should just cut her losses and bail out now.[/ul][/li]
At this point, we don’t have enough information to speculate about. I think Foxy40 has a lot of thinking (and talking) to do, and if she chooses to share more information, to clarify the situation, then fine, we can keep delving into our armchair psychoanalysis. Until then, I don’t see the point in continuing to chew over it. In a situation like this, where our information is incomplete, and the conflict is ambiguous, we all tend to bring our biases to the table, examined or unexamined; we reveal our own conflicts by how we “read into” this sketchy story.
I think we should all back off unless and until more detailed are offered.
I think that even if everything is exactly as the OP described, she still overreacted to a minor change of decision by her husband and is acting like he’s a transgressive child rather than her equal partner.
You’re right–it’s a different kind of packing. What a 7-year-old needs much more closely approximates what an adult would need in the same situation. Change of underwear & clothes, PJs, toothbrush. Even someone with NO experience with kids could figure that out. And anything that’s not a “necessity,” like a stuffed animal or a favorite blanket, the dad could ask the kid “is there anything else you want to bring?” and the kid will tell him (a good idea for any parent, because as WhyNot points out, the “favorite thing” tends to change around with some kids). Because my husband travels a lot, I am “in charge” of approximately 95% of what goes on with the kids (in terms of organizing/planning/etc.), but I’m pretty sure he could pack an overnight case if he had to.
But as far as the OP is concerned…I would say that your plan was the “right” thing to do, manners-wise, and I think that the way you handled it with the other parent was OK. But it’s not worth getting all aggravated with your husband, either.
It is not HER money, it is THEIR money. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of issues in this “rocky” marriage aren’t because she does feel it is her money, since she primarily earns it.
Sure, and I’d be happy with just that. The rest can be improvised. But my husband is not happy if something is forgotten, even if he’s the one who packed the bag. But I get blamed for not telling him what to pack, because it IS my “job”, as we’ve divided our household chores. I have no idea when the next credit card payment is due (although I could figure it out if he got hit by a bus) and he has no idea what to put in the diaper bag. Would it be nice if we each knew everything? Maybe. But it’s also a lot of redundant energy when we’ve decided that working as a team and divvying up duties works 98% of the time.
Just because you think FoxyHusband should be able to pack a bag unsupervised doesn’t mean he thinks so, or that history has borne that out. In fact, of the one single instance we know about, he DIDN’T know what to bring.
If you can do a job competently and I micromanage it, then I’m being a control freak. If you’ve demonstrated that you can’t to a job competently, or if we’ve agreed in prior exchanges that the job is rightfully mine, and I micromanage it, then I’m being helpful.
We won’t really be able to know any of this unless the husband comes in and gives his side of the story. All I know is what Foxy provided in this thread. The husband was told to do something, agreed to do it, and then didn’t.
What does it matter if Foxy did not want to discuss the issue of giving money? The husband still should have objected if he did not like the idea. If Foxy then said something like “this is not open to discussion”, then I could side with the husband.
This could be the case, but we still don’t really know. It also could be that the husband is a loser. It could be that the husband just doesn’t like to pack and that Foxy is doing him a favor.
I can only go on what I have been given here. So far, in the only example I have of the husband’s actions, he acted like a child. He didn’t stand up to his wife and went behind her back to make a decision.
The only obvious thing here is that this marriage has problems.
It’s not always laziness. Families and married couples tend to specialize knowledge among themselves. They do it intuitively, but there is evidence (I can steer you toward a book for reference, if you want) that it is more efficient when it is done that way. Knowledge comes in about travel directions and it is assumed that the husband will memorize it. Packing for a trip, then it is assumed that the wife will remember the details. I’m obviously stereotyping for the example, it can be that the wife remembers everything about driving and that the husband is an expert at packing.
Even if the task is extremely simple, it just gets stored with the person who specializes in the knowledge. The others won’t think to remember it until the specialist complains about having too much work.
That is because everyone will assume that the woman knows how to do these things. If it were a man giving a list to his wife of what to buy at Home Depot, no one would think anything of it.
So what if the husband agreed to do something and then changed his mind? Why is that such a big deal. It was an issue of no consequence.
I think his apparent “agreement” might be overstated as well. I don’t know how many times I’ve nodded and said “ok, ok” to my wife when I wasn’t actually paying any attention to what she was saying but just trying to get out of the room. Guys do that all the time. We’re only really listening like 20% of the time and probably have a 5% retention of what was actually said.
Seriously, it wasn’t like he violated some sacred contract, he just blew off some minor directive, which he has every right to do as an equal adult partner.
Then sh could have packed herself. Making a list isn’t “helping,” it’s just controlling.
Why is it “acting like a child” to decide that you don’t need to follow every petty little order frrom your spouse?
Packing an overnight bag does not require specialized knowledge. Any adult – hell, even any child over the age of 10-- should be able to do it.
You left out “And don’t forget anything!”
She isn’t the boss of him. The fact that he said he’d do something when they first spoke about it shouldn’t mean he can’t change his mind later. A certain degree of flexibility is desirable in life. The fact that she told him to do something doesn’t constitute an ‘order’ which he has to carry out. Or it shouldn’t, anyway.
Look – he spoke with these people for half an hour. Foxy has never met them. Why shouldn’t she just assume that, having spoken with them, he believed that they meant to treat. Perhaps he even felt that offering them money would make them uncomfortable. He met them and spoke with them; we didn’t, and neither did Foxy. Which brings me to my second point:
He was right.
They did mean to treat, and they didn’t want any money. Foxy had to insist in order to get them to take any. This is rude, check-grabbyish behavior and may very well have made them quite uncomfortable. I know that my husband would have hated it.
End analysis – in this situation he was right. He read the situation correctly – the other couple meant to treat the daughter.
It’s entirely possible that my feelings about this situation are colored by Foxy’s previous posts about her husband. As I said before, her posts always leave me feeling sorry for him because she speaks of him with such thinly veiled contempt. It’s hard for me to believe that she isn’t even more cutting to him face-to-face.
Contempt. Wow, that’s harsh. My mistake in this thread was to give all the details of the fight that prefaced the post rather than just post it as a question without my personal drama included.
I was venting.
Many people need lists. My husband is one of them. Would he agree with this? Probably at least he has never complained about them or said they make him feel like a child. Does he request them? No. Does he forget things when he doesn’t have the list? Most definitely.
I liked the Home Depot analogy. A similar one is when I went to have my XM radio installed, my husband wrote me detailed instructions on whom to see and what to do rather than expecting me to remember. I appreciated the help.
I am surprised at what people pick up on in a thread. It never occurred to me that a simple list would be perceived as patronizing. Since many of you have read my few and far between threads and posts, you may be aware that my husband has a mental illness and is literally lost without direction. Would he agree with that? Most certainly and says it often. Which is one of the major reasons I am still in this marriage. Leaving a person that is ill to fend for himself isn’t an easy thing to do.
The dynamics of my marriage is complicated and if he was on this board he would echo that statement. I don’t have contempt for him. Much frustration and anger at times. However, like Jess, I feel sorry for him.
As I was looking at my emails I just found this from my husband…
I will be packing her bag and dropping her off about 3 b4 I go to training at 4. I will find out what time i can get her tomorrow and give the mom (Rosalinda) the $50.
Yes, he most certainly said he would do it and even put it in writing.
Haven’t you ever planned to do something and then changed your mind when the actual time came, though?
And, again (third time I’ve mentioned this, I think), he was right. The parents didn’t want the money. You had to insist upon them taking it (which, as I also mentioned, many people – including my husband – would have found much ruder than not offering any money in the first place).
I don’t have a problem with your writing a list for your husband. I’ve done this for mine; and he does it for me, depending on what the list is needed for. What I had a problem with is the snippy, “Don’t forget anything.”
As for my ‘harshness,’ well, maybe. But in the several threads I have read by you about your husband, ‘contempt’ is the word which comes closest to what you seem to feel for him – in my reading anyway.
Maybe to you, but Foxy felt it was important. We don’t know this family so we can’t really tell, but what if they don’t want to take out Foxy’s kid anymore because her parents don’t pay? If they know that Foxy will always pay them for her kid then they might treat the kid more often, since it doesn’t cost them much to do so.
I’m sure that an envelope with money in it would be part of the 5% retained from the conversation.
He has the right to ignore directions, but that doesn’t mean he is right in doing so. He is still wrong in this situation. The other family was never going to ask for money, even if they wanted it. He even agreed to give the money even if they insisted they didn’t want any. The fact that the family didn’t ask for the money is not a good reason to keep the money.
His violation wasn’t of a sacred contract. I’m not asking for a public flogging or anything. I’m just saying simply that he was wrong.
Can’t it be both? Maybe the husband wants to pack the bag the way Foxy likes it? He doesn’t exactly object to the lists.
It’s the way in which he disobeyed her that bothers me. If he had a better excuse for keeping the money, then it wouldn’t be childish.
Don’t associate specialized with difficult from my example above. When someone specializes in something, it can be extremely easy, but that person is the only one with the knowledge. I’m sure it wouldn’t take long for Foxy’s husband to acquire bag packing knowledge, but why should he even bother if Foxy can do it just fine.
What if he actually wants the list, would it be patronizing then?
Once again I will say it doesn’t make him right here.
The husband had spent enough time talking to the other parents to establish that they did not expect any money. he was in a better position to evaluate this than his wife was.
I’d probably take it as a suggestion, but not as anorder which cannot be disobeyed. I would also reserve the righyt o simply say, “i didn’t give them the money. I changed my mind.” And that would be the end of it because it’s not important.
That’s your opinion. It’s not a scientific fact. He obviously disagreed and his opinion was as valid as his wife’s.
I disagree, but it’s really here nor there since that’s purely a matter of opinion, not fact.
He probably doesn’t dare. I don’t doubt that he’s afraid to ever disagree with her to her face. Her contempt for him is palpable in her posts about him.
“Disobeyed?” Is he a child? “A better excuse for keepiing the money?” Why does he need an excuse? He has no obligation to “excuse” himself. This is exactly the kind of demeaning, belittling attitude I’m talking about.
Because he’s an adult who didn’t ask for help and should be expected to be able to perform a simple task without written, anal instructions.
We;ve established that he didn’t ask for a list, so the question is moot. I will say that no adult should require a list.
Once again, neither you nor his wife has any standing tro decide whether he was “right” or not. He doesn’t have to justify himself.
If reasonable adults in a marriage disagree over a social behavior like this, it seems like it’s up to each individual to be responsible for the behavior they think is right. In general I would probably side with Foxy in terms of wanting to at least offer, but in my case I certainly wouldn’t expect my wife to handle such a thing for me. Putting her in the socially awkward situation of offering money when she (for the sake of argument here) doesn’t view it as necessary or appropriate is itself rude.
If for some reason I thought she would be comfortable with it and she changed her mind, a simple phone call and a “thanks for everything, are you sure we can’t chip in towards some of the cost?” would have sufficed. I can’t see how I’d even be mad about it… “sorry, I got there, talked with them, and it didn’t seem right or necessary” may be a perfectly valid reason for her and if I don’t agree, I’m an adult and can make a polite call.
Yes he most certainly does have to justify himself. Simply because he did not do what he said he would do. If he was uncomfortable, I would have done it. If he disagreed with it, we could have talked about it. None of those things happened.
Of course this “fight” has been over between my husband and I for a couple of days now. But how we resolved it isn’t important and will only add to the drama in the thread within this thread.
BTW, the hostess took the money and purchased a souvenir for each of our daughters. Everyone was happy (especially the girls with the new toys.)
