I have been in my wife’s country for the last week. Before today it was all going fine. We have our 2 and a half year old son with us and it’s his first real time meeting his family on my wife’s side.
I wouldn’t have had any complaints but I had such an awful experience today and I wanna write it here to know whether this is an overreaction or not.
My wife had been planning a road trip with her close friends all week, go to another city, stay a night and check out a few sights. Sounds perfectly fine but from the start I became unhappy.
My wife had told me it was gonna be a 1 and a half hour drive, so I was perfectly fine with that. Turns out it was a 4 hour drive. My wife sat in the front with her friend while I was in the back with the baby and the funny thing is she didn’t once turn back to let me know it’s actually a much longer drive than she originally told me. At that point I’m already pretty mad at her. Maybe it’s an overreaction but I just feel I deserve to know how long a drive is, especially with a baby in the car.
Next thing is during the rest stop my wife lost sight of our son. She grabbed his hand and walked into the shop to get snacks with him and her friend, I saw him go with her so thought it was a good chance to stretch my legs so I walked around for a few minutes and then came back to sit down, she came out of the shop and asked me where our son was. Luckily he was around the corner watching some kids running around but the fact is there was a 2 minute stretch where he wasn’t being watched. He could have easily walked onto the road and gotten hit by a car or even be kidnapped. Anything can happen in two minutes. I feel like this is a really big deal yet she won’t even admit she is wrong and blames me saying I was probably on my phone and wasn’t paying attention.
Once we finally arrived we had a 30 minute rest in the hotel and then they wanted to go out. So I’m walking with them and then they go jump into these cars, they had ordered uber without me knowing and when I went to get into mine I noticed there was no baby seat. I tried to call my son out of there but my wife was holding him and said it was just gonna be a quick 5 minute ride, so I felt like I had no choice and got in. Apparently it’s not illegal in this country for a baby to have no baby seat but in my country it certainly is. I told my wife I don’t want her doing this again, then of course she did it again on the way back to the hotel. She tells me her friends think I’m really stubborn for complaining about that but I feel there is a reason for baby seats, they protect the baby and a crash can happen on any drive no matter how long.
I complained to my wife about all these things and she just gets angry at me and then I’m just the bad guy and she makes sure I know her friends think the same as her.
I feel so useless because I’m completely relying on my wife in this country, I wouldn’t even know how to order a taxi or train ticket here. I try to tell my wife I deserve to know everything going on but so often she just speaks to others in her language and I’m just following along with whatever she is doing.
The way I look at it is, I have been the main carer for my son since he was 6 months old, so I not deserve an opinion on these things? Do I not deserve to know how long a big drive is gonna be? Especially when it’s a one night trip and the drive will be repeated again tomorrow? Do I not deserve to decide whether he goes in a car with no proper baby seat? No matter how silly her and her friends think I am, I think I deserve to make that choice.
So do you guys think I’m overreacting and I just need to calm down or should I be legitimately pissed off?