Wife fears thrill-seeking husband’s dangerous lifestyle could leave kids without a dad. AITA? + UPDATE
"My (28m) husband (31m) of 6 years takes ridiculous risks while doing his 'extreme' sports. Now that we have kids (2f,1m) I want it to stop. How do I do this?"
I chose to be a SAHM, I do miss my career sometimes but I love spending time with both kids, my husband works very hard to give me this. Our first was planned and we’d hoped for several years between kids but things finally happened. It’s a little more stressful than I’d hoped but we love both kids.
My dad adores my husband and he’s an introvert like Gregory, so he’s to bed while the rest of us are talking late into the night. My dad loves hearing about all about Greg’s adventures so he’s happy paying.
Which sucks for me because my own dad is not an advocate for my desires. Thank you for all the advice I have some reading to do. Hopefully I can update when we get home.
So this is coming to a head because at the moment we are on a ski vacation with my family. For the most part we are having a great time and have my parents, brother and kids and my aunt and cousins and their respective kids. It's a great time.
My husband lives for this stuff but while we are being more social, he's in the lift line at 9 and he comes off the mountain at 4:30 like clockwork. He doesn't take hot chocolate breaks with us and he doesn't eat lunch with us.
He will eat at the family dinner but instead of staying up telling stories and drinking wine, he goes to bead and listens to music until he falls asleep. So strike one, I'm annoyed with him being so anti social.
But the annoyance is compounded by the fact that he is doing behaviors that we have fought over many times...him not realizing he's not 19 anymore and now has kids and responsibilities.
I found out last night that he made friends with a group of local kids who have been showing him the "back hills" where there are rocks and cliffs to jump off of, but this is off ski area so he has to ski down to the road and actually hitch hike back to the ski resort. I'm livid, literally seeing red, wanting to do terrible things to Him angry.
This is bad enough but we have this same fight every time we go anywhere, whether it's surfing, mountain biking, rock climbing you name it...he's always pushing it. We have this same fight almost every week night because he goes to Brazilian jiu-jitsu and comes back with his knees tweaked or face all scratched up. I'm sick of this.
In fairness to my husband he's a great dad and we had two kid much closer in age than we'd planned and he's very supportive and good at giving me breaks, but that makes his irresponsible behavior even more stark because I can't raise two small kids on my own if he kills himself flying down and mountain with no ski patrol (or surfing waves too big, etc...).
And to add insult to injury, he says he can't wait to take our kids along on all his adventures as soon as they are old enough. Like I said, I can't raise two small kids by myself. How do I get him to stop the nonsense and take his responsibilities seriously?
Edit: this blew up, sorry I wasn’t around to participate—an ironic twist, I skied all day with my cousin and had such fun my husband actually beat me in. To address the most common concerns:
We have a huge life insurance policy through my husbands work, as far as I know it covers everything but I need to look into. It’s part of his job so we actually pay very small premiums on it.
Here were the top rated comments from readers in response to the OP's initial post:
A compromise mught be that he has to carry enough life insurance that you would be comfortable and have enough for a full time nanny until the kids are 18 if he is going to do this stuff. He can take the extra money out of his fun money. Edit add: he needs disability and long term care insurance almost more than life insurance.
MANY of those policies are voided by a bunch of stuff he was listed as doing. Be careful OP.
While we were married I made my ex-husband take out life insurance when he insisted on riding a motorcycle to work every day. With three small children and me as a stay at home mom I thought it was reasonable. He gets to ride and I can put down some worry. He eventually crashed and quit riding.
Get good insurance on him, not just life insurance, but disability insurance as well. Make it a non-negotiable. Second, you married him and this was a something you knew he did.
You, nor anyone else, are never going to change him. If you try to force him or guilt him into doing things differently, you will only breed resentment in your marriage. You need to decide if this is a deal breaker for you.
Think about your reasons for wanting him to stop doing these risky behaviours. Write them down and then when you are not angry or in the moment, bring out the list and have a conversation about it with him.
The minute you start raising your voice, stop. You need to communicate the emotions without demonstrating the emotions, or all he will hear is fear and anger from you and he won't hear your actual reasoning.
So, do you have experience in these various things, such that you (or perhaps someone else who does have experience) can say that he's really doing very risky stuff? Or is it more a matter of him doing things that seem risky to you?
Like, jiu-jitsu - from what I can tell, there's no significant risk of death or serious injury there - though he could potentially get a joint goofed up. Same sort of thing with surfing and mountain biking - is he really doing terribly dangerous stuff, or is would any surfing or mountain biking (or off-trail skiing) be out-of-bounds for you?
Has he hurt himself significantly enough doing any of these things that he had to be admitted to the hospital? Seems like repeated hospital stays would be the first sign that someone is going a little too extreme.
Three weeks later, the OP returned with an update.
So that post totally blew up. I posted it at like 7:30 Monday morning while the family was getting ready, got zero responses and went out skiing, by lunch time it had like 200 responses and by the time I got in that evening it was over 500.
By far my biggest internet post ever (mostly DIY and crafts stuff). I spent Monday night carefully reading every single response because there was a ton of value in all of them.
One post stood out and I apologize to whoever made it that I can't mention it them by name, but essentially they said it appeared I was conflating two issues, my husband taking risks and him not being social on vacation.
I guess in the interest of brevity I had left out some details, I found out about Gregory's back country skiing because he is essentially my dad's hero and my dad sat there like a star struck school girl while Gregory regaled him with tales of backcountry skiing with local teenagers and jumping off 20 foot cliffs into powder.
I was deeply annoyed with Gregory because it was the first time he was social with anyone. We were on day 3 of the vacation and he had literally gone to bed at 8 every night to get up and ski.
I was jealous of how much fun my brother's wife and my two cousin's spouses were so engaged with the family. So I conflated my annoyance with both him (and my dad frankly) for being anti-social and taking risks. The posts the other day really helped me realize that and I made it a point to be nicer to him.
It also helped that Monday night my cousin's husband got rip roaring drunk in our condo and started cursing up blue streak. This with kids aged 1-10 all staying in the same relatively small space.
He and my cousin had a extremely embarrassing and public fight that started inside and ended outside within earshot of the entire base area "village." It made me realize that no matter how annoyed I can get with Gregory and his desire to not be social on most occasions, he will never, ever put me through that which helped me gain some perspective.
The yesterday afternoon as my cousin and her husband were getting ready to leave, he was acting like a jack ass while driving (he was probably wickedly hung over) in the parking lot and ended up sliding right into a snow bank, giving their new Lexus some significant body damage.
He got out cursing and spewing in the parking lot all while basically standing like a helpless baby screaming at my cousin that she needed to "call someone goddamnit." Gregory and my Dad very calmly dug his car out of the snow, dug up some gravel for traction and then backed his car out.
It took maybe 10 minutes. It made me realize that quite possibly, all of Gregory's experience in remote places while biking, skiing, bowhunting, etc... have taught him to be relaxed and knowledgeable in a high pressure situation and he just did what had to be done.
I felt very lucky and felt very sorry for cousin. I was watching this very hungover, overweight man cry in the middle of a parking lot because "that's a $6500 grill on that car!" while my very attractive and in shape husband who doesn't drink was calmly digging the entire car out.
Yesterday, morning I asked him if he would be willing to ski with me that day and he said absolutely, that he was hoping we would get at least one day together. So another strike on me for not communicating with him and assuming that he would see me as something of a "burden" to his ski day so I didn't even want to ask if he'd ski with me.
We actually had a great time together and he's so experienced he actually taught me more than I probably ever would have gotten from a paid lesson. While we were on the chairlift that day, I very calmly brought up my concerns about the back country skiing.
I brought up him leaving me to watch the kids (on other vacations, as I've said my mom and aunt are on "kid duty' this trip--though me and my brother's wife are watching the kids today while my mom and aunt ski) while he goes and does activities.
He assured me that the back country skiing at this area was very safe but that in the future he would get all the equipment necessary (float coat, peeps) in order to reduce the risk and he said that he was sorry for leaving me to go surfing on our last trip.
He said that he would try very hard to communicate before hand what his desires for any particular trip will be in advance and have it be a dialectic conversation with give and take vs him just assuming he can bolt off whenever the waves are big. I also said I was sorry for being so cold to him since the trip started but that I would appreciate him trying to hang out for a little longer each night.
He said that it's thinly veiled secret that he can't stand my cousin's husband because he is constantly trying to "one upping" and "talking down" to Gregory for a myriad of reasons (they work in a similar field, so I guess there's something of a rivalry) and now that he's gone he will be more comfortable.
So last night Gregory cooked steaks for everyone and stayed up a little later (8:30 is later right?) and chatted and seemed to have a good time. So today, since this was a planned day off for me to watch the kids, we agreed that he could meet his new friends really early so they could do some in area hiking before the lifts started and that he could stay out as late as he wanted if the snow was good.
So basically all is good, I love my husband more than words can possibly say and I'm glad we had this time together because I think while we had relatively minor problems in the grand scheme of things, we are coming out healthier and happier for it. If I hadn't made my post Monday morning, I very well have made the rest of the vacation miserable for both of us. Thank you very much for all the all the help!
Here were the top rated comments from readers in response to the OP's post:
It's really nice to see such a positive update, I'm happy for you OP. I know what it's like to hide out from horrible family members, too, so I get it. Keep talking to one another! The one thing that still stuck out was this - if you have a planned day to watch the kids during a vacation like this, I hope that he does too. You deserve to have a little fun and r&r yourself or with friends!
To be honest, I get the vibe. I would hate to be stuck at a ski resort with any of these people but I do think this is just lowkey drama at the end of the day.
I don't know, I think it’s obnoxious to act like you’re on a solo trip when you’re vacationing with family. No family time, no socializing with the in laws, and then he acts like she had to ask him to spend time with her? Yeah I’d be annoyed too.
Her manly, manly masculine man husband is perfect now that she realizes her cousin’s fat emotional husband is useless. She’s back to loving being a stay at home mom who does all the parenting even on vacation!
Yes this is exactly the feeling I was left with. Basically nothing changed. She’s only more content with the situation because her cousin married an overweight asshole who blew up. That conclusion seems pretty childish. Once some time passes where she sees their relationship individually, the problems will emerge again.
This could be an object lesson in the fact that you marry the person you marry, not the person you hope they will become (or, for that matter, the person they say they will become).