How do you and your spouse determine how long to stay at family gatherings/events?
Basically just a question to other families who may have a better solution. I am getting frustrated with my SO in regards to this. The last 2 family events for my side of family I have had to hear, "I'm bored, can we go home yet?" multiple times from my SO. Yet, when his family hosts things we can stay hour upon hour, even past the kid's bedtimes when we have to work the next day, and when I say we need to get going I get ignored, and maybe we go in the next hour or 2. I understand that we all personally like our own families better (I think) and want to spend more time with them than non bio family, but there needs to be some fairness. He also gets SUPER antsy if there is anything else we usually do or talked about doing on that day. Like Saturdays, he freaks out about having to go grocery shopping. If we are out at a picnic or something on a Saturday he is watching his phone like a hawk and starts being weird about it, like we are going to run out of food if we don't go shopping at 6:45 pm THAT day. It's the same thing on Sundays, we practically can't do anything because he has to go pick up SD10 between 5:30 and 6:30 pm. That's wasting a WHOLE day! This probably sounds weird, but I don't know how to handle it.
My mother and her husband
My mother and her husband take separate vehicles to everything. He owns his own business and sometimes needs to pick up and go at a moment's notice. Also, my mother is a social butterfly and he's not, so when he's ready to leave she can stay and continue to have fun. This has worked beautifully for them.
Yeah, separate cars for sure.
Yeah, separate cars for sure. This isn't really a communication problem, it's your DH being self-centered. It's all about HIM and what HE wants to do, it sounds like it never even entered his mind to think, "She sure is having a good time with her family, I'm glad we came."
>I understand that we all
>I understand that we all personally like our own families better (I think) and want to spend more time with them than non bio family, but there needs to be some fairness. <
You may be right there. I like my in-laws, but there is only so much of them I can take. One evening with them is enough for me and if the hour of our scheduled leave time passes I start getting ansty!
I wish I could be more like my Sister-in-law's husband. He doesn't like going to my in-laws either. I swear, this guy is a master of getting out of my in-laws house early;
"There's a sale at Best Buy I want to check out. Bye! I'll see ya later.",
"Oh I could really use a beer right now. Oh there's none left? I'll just run out and get some. Bye! I'll see ya later.",
"My buddy Steve just called. He needs help moving his couch. Bye! I'll see ya later.",
"Oh darn it, I just remembered I have some mail I have to send off today! Bye! I'll see ya later."
I guess I am the odd man out,
I guess I am the odd man out, because I was taught that even if I am miserable to find something positive to meditate on, because it's not all about me all of the time...
I have thought about taking separate cars, but we have an SUV and a work truck, so it's a lot of gas to take both somewhere.
I arrive late and leave
I arrive late and leave early-separate cars/bike. I never bring my bios to MIL things either. I basically just make an appearance, help with the clean up and go home. Once time, DH got very drunk and MIL had to bring him and SD back home. Lets just say he will NEVER do that again...
Separate cars is what we do
Separate cars is what we do and DH has to stay at least 2 hours. I do not ask more than one of these every few months. For his family, he knows not to ask me to have anything to do with them. Huge boundary issue with his mom. She is un-medicated bipolar.
This works for us.
I stopped going to his
I stopped going to his family's events. I hated being stuck all day long since they live several miles from our home. I refuse to drive two separate cars such a long distance.