Adapted from an online discussion.
Dear Carolyn: My otherwise lovely and companionable hubby has serious issues concerning vacations. We make a comfortable income and are not in debt beyond our mortgage or car payment.
Every year, he goes on several personal weekends away but says these aren’t vacations because they’re part of his hobby.
Adapted from an online discussion.
Dear Carolyn: My otherwise lovely and companionable hubby has serious issues concerning vacations. We make a comfortable income and are not in debt beyond our mortgage or car payment.
Every year, he goes on several personal weekends away but says these aren’t vacations because they’re part of his hobby.
Last year, after I begged to go to the beach, he ruined the trip for me in multiple ways. The guilt I felt for our even going at all, knowing he didn’t want to, added to the sourness.
We just had another major fight about vacations. We’ve been married 15 years, never traveled abroad, never gone away for more than four days anywhere.
He earns substantially more than I, making me dependent on him for getaways.
Multiple times, including the recent fight, he has said, “Why do you think you deserve a vacation?”
It’s a stumper. I don’t know how to say I deserve one without sounding entitled and privileged. I also don’t know why it has to be justified. We’re stuck in a small rural city (I moved to where he lived when we married) and I’m bored, isolated and hungry for more in the world, but without exception, he tries to make me feel bad for wanting any time away.
He’s not a workaholic, is diligent about saving and traveled the world before our marriage (and took two quasi-business trips to India during it).
I feel so belittled, shamed and increasingly worthless in having to justify the tiniest jaunts, to say nothing of wishing for a once-in-a-lifetime trip to, say, Scotland or Switzerland, two places that call to me deeply.
Do vacations need to be deserved in some way that I’m not seeing? I have my own micro business, which has grown but is still not a big earner, making solo getaways hard to manage, especially since hubby also requires that I pay substantial medical bills for cancer on my own. Any thoughts?
— Wanderlust Denied
Wanderlust Denied: I think we can stop counting votes for Spouse of the Year.
Allow me to answer your husband’s hideous recurring question:
You deserve vacations because you’re human and worthy of joy and it’s a big, fascinating world out there. And no one lives forever, and you have freaking cancer, so your lifespan is presumably not-forever-minus-X.
Sweet flying unprintables. I see nothing “lovely” about dunning you for your cancer bills! I may never stop howling.
This is, pardon my armchair quarterbacking, horrific psychological abuse. Ungenerous, unloving, petty, selfish, dismissive, controlling and — oho! — entitled and privileged. Soooo happy Mr. Cuddlehubby has a hobby! It means he leaves.
Healthy people find joy in giving. Extremes aren’t necessary, we can absolutely keep some bonbons for ourselves — but the capacity for joy in giving joy to others is, for most people, factory-installed. Your husband is missing crucial empathy and decency functions.
Maybe someone broke them — perhaps parents who were as cruel and withholding with him? But the “why” is beyond mattering for your purposes now.
What matters: You’re suffering; you identify a form of relief; your partner can easily afford it; your partner nixes it for you but buys it regularly for himself, rubs it in your face while watching you suffer, and blames you for suffering.
Then insults your intelligence! “Hobby”-not-vacation, my flat butt. His real hobby is keeping you broke, friendless and on his leash in the sticks.
Please, please learn about emotional abuse at thehotline.org. If you need a financial and marital escape plan, then tap family, old friends, everyone who cares about you. He clearly isolates you (abuse trait), so restore ties you’ve let languish.
Love builds us up; feeling “belittled, shamed and increasingly worthless” indicates abuse, not love. We’re not talking about a mismatch in temperament, appetites or interests here, where it’s nobody’s fault that you’re too different to meet each other’s needs. Nope. Your story is more like, he’d rather do all the fun things, so he dumps the dishes on you even though he sees your hands are bleeding raw from years of his scut work — then shames you for wanting a break. K? Not lovely. Blame applies.
Readers’ thoughts:
· Oh, honey, this is so completely not okay that I read your post with my mouth gaping open. Read back your own post as if it were written by a friend and not you. Your husband has so thoroughly undermined your sense of self that you literally just tacked on at the end the fact that you have cancer. Holy sweet puppy dogs.
I make a fraction of what my husband makes. And yet he’s the one always encouraging ME to take vacations or visit my family, even when he can’t get time off. You deserve people in your life who actually want you to be happy. Don’t put up with this cruelty for another second.
· “Needs a vacation” actually needs a divorce.
· Then please get to Scotland, and let us know because we are SO rooting for you!
The post Carolyn Hax: In husband’s eyes, spouse must ‘deserve’ a vacation
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