If I try to fill in all the details of this situation, it’ll tend strongly toward TLDR, and I’ll bias it beyond all recognition. So, here’s the outline:
I haven’t had a vacation in over five years. I’ve had my nose to the grindstone, in more ways than one, for a very long time. I have taken Christmas Day off, and pretty much nothing else, for several years now.
My wife is going to the Virgin Islands for a week, on a work trip.
Her parents live nearby, are well off, and could easily keep our baby son for a few days. The kid would be fine. He loves them, is comfortable around them, etc.
Guess what. Profit? Nope. My wife asks her goddamn MOTHER to go on the trip with her.
Right, so the well-off retiree gets to go to a gorgeous tropical island for a week, and the frazzled, on-the-edge dad gets to fucking stay at home with the kid.
What the hell? The kicker is that I never had a choice. I was never even asked. She says that her original idea “came from a good place, and that she was intending to take the baby with them,” giving me a break for a week, but then she “decided that the baby couldn’t fly for that long.”
:mad:
GodDAMN it. What the hell do you want me to say?!
Now she thinks everything should be hunky dory, because I should have forgiven her by now. Except they’re leaving tomorrow, and guess who’s staying with us tonight before they leave for the airport. Right, her mom, and I’m going to get to listen to them talk about plans, while I wipe snot out of the baby’s nose all night, grade 75 rough drafts, and plan for another week of getting up early, staying up late, and lab work.
I feel like we’re not on the same team here, and even if we were, I’m benched. Fuck.
Any relatives that can watch the kid? Not necessarily over night, but it might be nice if someone can take him/her for a few hours two or three times this week. Just so you can have the house to your self for a little while.
By “nearby”, I mean that they live about 1.5 hours away…easy enough to get there for a big reason, but much too far away just to ask them to watch the kid for a few. And no, there are no relatives any closer than that.
IME when I hear about this kind of thing happening in a marriage (usually to the wives, who are who I hear about) it seems that the ones who come to terms with it best and don’t get bitter are the ones who just decide to meet their needs themselves. They buy their own birthday presents, or announce that they’re heading out for an evening and just leave for a couple of hours, or whatever.
So my suggestion would be to arrange a week off and a trip to wherever you want to go, if you can manage it. Go see old friends or something, or to a place you’ve always wanted to go.
Ouch. That is pretty nasty. Usually I try to be the “well, from the other person’s perspective…” poster, but I’m having trouble spinning this one to find the benefit of the doubt here.
Sorry. I guess my only advice is as **dangermom **says. Plan a getaway for yourself, even if it’s just a long weekend. Not out of spite or getting even, just because it sounds like you really need a break and your wife obviously isn’t going to plan that for you.
Did you bother to ask her how she would feel if the situation were reversed. Y’know, she’s been working hard without a holiday, for 5+ yrs, you get a free ticket to a tropical destination and decide to take her Dad along, and leave her with the kid. She’d be okay with that? No hard feelings? If she answers this, with a straight face, ‘yes’, then yeah, I’d be steamed too!
Does not having a holiday for five years over, indicate that you were required to work like a dog? Or that you chose too? If it was your choice to go without a holiday, then you can’t really blame her for that part.
I’d be booking a golf holiday or whatever else you fancy, to the tropics, for the day after she returns. Even if it’s just a weekend. Leave her behind to deal with everything and see how she likes it. Explain that it’s not ‘tit for tat’ so much as this whole thing has made you realize exactly how much you needed a break. She was right, everyone needs a break sometimes. Then thank her for bringing this to your attention. She wants you to get over it, right? I’m pretty sure a golf weekend somewhere warm would get you over it pretty good!
At my house there would be real, true, discontent, if this happened, so I totally understand.
Holy crap that sucks. My now ex did something similar, she announced out of the blue that she and her best friend were going to Hawaii for a week to relax and get away for awhile.
She couldn’t seem to understand why I was less than thrilled for her. Which then evolved into a full blown fight.
At least you didn’t have a huge fight over it Ogre! Although for some reason I see one in your future.
She didn’t think of giving YOU a break for a week in the Virgin Islands? That’s terrible, unconscionable. As a woman, I’ve been trying to see the situation from her point of view, but I just can’t.
The advice to get away on your own is good. You need a vacation. When you get back, you should determine whether you need couples counseling.
I think an important point is to lay out exactly why you have been working so hard for five years. Is it something that is temporary, like starting a new business or finishing school? Is it forever? Is it to dig your family out of a financial hole?
And then, how does your wife feel about that? If you discussed it with her at the time, did she agree to the plan of you working so hard? Was it discussed, or just something you decided you needed to do?
If you can take the weekend to be honest about those things to yourself, you can talk to her about them when she gets back.
Honestly, I can easily see how a wife, who’s been kinda on her own for the last five years, may feel more comfortable with her mother. It may be something as dramatic as being bitter over the fact that you have no time for anything, and haven’t for the past five years, or it could be as simple as her assuming, based on your behavior for the last five years, that you couldn’t/wouldn’t have time to go.
Five years is a very long time, and habits will develop. You also need to make sure that your relationship is in a good place right now - five years is a long time to live like a roommate with your husband.
Ow. What did your wife say to the possibility the kid could have stayed with her parents instead of her mom going with her? Or that, maybe, the kid could in fact have survived a long plane flight with both parents?
(I assume her dad isn’t comfortable with a baby for a week? My dad sure wouldn’t be. Would he be comfortable for one or two nights? For ONE night’s good sleep and not having to deal with the Little One at 6:30 am I’d be strongly tempted to do a 1.5 hr drive.)
Regardless, I don’t understand why your wife and her mom can’t at least stay up with the baby tonight before they fly off to tropical-land. Even though it’s a work trip, your wife has still got a weekend without the baby first, right?
When she gets back, is there any way she can just take the kid for a week while you either take a break or concentrate on your lab work without interruption? Even if you have to get a local hotel or something. At least then she’d understand… part of the issue. My husband and I have done that kind of exchange, kind of – one weekend he announced he HAD to go on a hike or he would explode, and we drove to Yosemite, he did his hike to Half Dome at 5am, and I kept the kid in non-optimal conditions (especially since she was cranky at getting up at 5am). Several months later, my best friend from college was on the West Coast, and we drove to San Diego to see her, and then she and I went sightseeing while mr. hunter volunteered to look after the Little One in the hotel room. I didn’t have the greatest time in Yosemite, and I imagine mr. hunter had a fairly crap time in SD, but we did it for the other person. But a week is… wow, a long time. Don’t know how that would go down for either of us.
Sateryn76, you make some good points. If she’d taken the kid I would have understood totally (“Ogre has no time to do anything so I’ll just go and leave him alone with peace and quiet!” I could totally see doing that with my husband, and indeed we did do that once, and he loved it, although we talked about it first) but… not taking the baby is kind of a slap in the face on top of that.
It’s somewhat mitigated by the fact that it’s a work trip. Somewhat. And I can understand wanting to have one-on-one time with mom – she might be a wealthy retiree, but she also might need a break from home/husband.
Did she ask you if you wanted to go? She should have asked you first.
How old is the baby? Old enough to teach some bad habits while mom is gone?
I’d be upset too, but if she’s not ordinarily this clueless, I’d let it go. Wish her well (it’ll make her feel guilty), enjoy your time with the baby, and try to make time for something fun while she’s gone.
Yeah, I was coming back in here to suggest that you take this evening off. Take yourself out to dinner and spend an hour at your favorite evening hangout.
Your wife is maybe a tad bit selfish and self centered?
Did you counter propose and say “how abouts the kid at grandma’s and you and I go? After all I haven’t have a vacation in 5 years and this would be a great getaway for the 2 of us.”
Major sickass =( and I say when she gets back, take your own vacation somewhere.
Honestly, if I didn’t know any better, I would ask you if this was 1989 and your name was Frank, because a guy in mrAru’s division had his wife take off for a weeks vacation [though it was skiing, and her mother] and show up with a new boyfriend and divorce paperwork. [She had been seeing this guy behind his back and he met up with her and her mother :eek: on vacation to arrange the paperwork for the divorce]
Not that I think there is anything behind your wife’s vacation crap except stupidity.
I don’t know - if she’s going on a work trip, even a “conference”, taking the baby would be a lot more of a hassle for her. We took our 8 month old to Arizona, and even with both of us on a total vacation, he was hard to handle. It killed any vacation we could have had.
And, if mom and dad both work, and the dad is working so hard (and has been for the last five years), doesn’t that mean that mom gets the brunt of the childcare? Maybe the OP is a greatly enlighten dad, but in the vast majority of cases, the mom works, the dad works, and the mom does the majority of child care.
Maybe the mom thinks she deserves some time off from baby, since she’s going there for work. Maybe the mom thinks that dad should have to do both for once, since she’s the one doing it the majority of time.
Of course, all of this should have been discussed at the time, rationally and calmly, and since it hasn’t, I suspect there’s some real communication problems. It happens to everybody (our first few years with our son were dark for our marriage), and this may be the time to get some feelings out in the open, on both sides.
Yeah, the only way that I can take her side at all is if Ogre really could have been taking some more time off before now and make it a shared sacrifice between the two, if OgreWife thinks he’s been a douche who is ignoring her and their kid, and OgreWife really was on the edge and needs time away from him and baby.
But that’s assuming also that she’s been trying to tell him this. If she’s expecting him to read her mind, not cool.
If he didn’t discuss the reasons for working so much with her and get her honest understanding of it, also not so cool.
Sorry. No, the issue is definitely NOT whether she does most of the child care. She doesn’t. Absolutely not. It’s 50/50. I work, yes. And yes, it’s somewhat temporary. I’m working on my PhD, and have been for the past five years or so. She also works. During the days, the Ogreling is at day care. At night and on the weekends, we both drop everything and take care of the kid. It’s 100% mutual, down to food prep, doctor’s visits, bath time, play time, and getting up in the middle of the night if he cries. NOBODY in this relationship has a basis for complaining about the other person’s childcare commitments.
Look, we just had a raging fight about this. That’s enough, I think. She apologized profusely and we cried on each other’s shoulders. She tearfully said that she doesn’t know what the fuck she was thinking.
I can do one of two things at this point. I can hold on to my anger and let it fester, or I can let it go. I’m going to try hard to let it go, and I’m going to ask a mod to close this. If I keep coming back here and allowing this thread to feed my anger, it’s going to be bad.
So, thank you all very much for your sympathy and your kind wishes. Hopefully, the next thread I open about this situation will be from the Virgin Islands, some time in the future, when all these bad feelings have finally been put to rest.
