Relationship advice: my OH didn't defend me!!

Mickyfinn

I agree with you 100% lister. I have been in similar situations and ponder on my previous actions from time to time. However you should not lower yourself to these peoples level. If someone is abusing you walk away. In my opinion you should have got out of the situation and either called security or the police. These people are paid to deal with these issues. If someone throws a drink over my friends in a bar, I don't take the law into my own hands and punch their lights out. I approach the bouncers and have them ejected from the club. If I escalate things I'll get thrown out and the altication will continue on the pavement. Probably ending in a stabbing etc.

Please remember that we do not live in a safe world - our newspapers are full of tragedies where someone is stabbed to death for stopping people throwing paper at their girlfriend on a bus/trying to help etc.. We pay our taxes for someone else to deal with these lawbreakers. Had your boyfriend got involved he may have hit someone and ended up with a court case and a criminal record. I doubt you'd be writing on here to tell us what a tough man you have etc.

Croydon is not a safe place people carry knives and guns. People have threatened me with broken bottles in the bars there. Walking away is the sensible answer.

Your boyfriend should have said - I'm not putting up with this I'm leaving, and told security about their behaviour, if you were still unsatisfied the police should have been called. Please don't blame him for what he didn't see and realise with women all wanting Girl Power these days you could have easily walked away or contacted security. I would gladly have lost £100 rather than been punched and spent a night in a prison cell.

Micky

delmontebanana

Excellent post lister and I whole-heartedly agree.

lister wrote:

I am frankly quite shocked by the number of people on this thread (and I am only on page 2 so far) who seem to imply that they quite often get into disputes that might require intervention from a partner, friend, relative etc.

However I still feel that any partner, friend, relative etc. ought to intervene whenever you are in a dispute. Intervention doesn't always have to be confrontational where they jump to your defence regardless of you being right or wrong, like you said they can and should always remove you from the situation. Where slinks' OH went wrong, is that he did neither.

Miroslav

slinks wrote:

aw bless, i was talking to a friend recently about how sweet it is when someone says 'courting'!!

OH has endless good points, otherwise i wouldn't be with him. we've discussed many times that i want him to be more supportive of me, although it's never been to this extent and because of something that i think is really dreadful.

:rotfl: :T @ 'my Pollard family' - ooh, i wish they were reading this thread!!!!

:rotfl: I don't know why I said 'Court' :rotfl:

I'd have it out with him...........or print off naughty pictures off the internet, stick his head on top and stick them on lamposts in your area, and when he sees them, tell him "Not to worry" :rotfl:

The Pollard family can be found in any Ikea Thread

grimelda

I really sympathise Slinks. I would not stay with such a man, no matter what his other qualities. There are dozens of ways he could have reacted which would have helped you and not escalated the problem, and he chose to just desert you in your hour of need for what? A bunch of chairs!

You need to know you can rely on your man, not necessarily to fight for you but at least to not desert you when you obviously need help. I just don't see how he could read your post and still not see what he did wrong.

In my opinion this was a test of character, and if what you have said is a true and accurate version of events, he failed it.

inkie

What's these 1p chairs??

skyrocket

I'm so sorry you went through this, there are scum everywhere.
As for your boyfriend it looks like you have seen his true colours in good time. For me his lack of involvement would be a deal breaker. I would hate to be with someone who didn't stand up for me. I had a boyfriend when I was younger who was like this, a self-confessed coward, and after a similar altercation where he didn't stand up for me I lost any respect for him. After all, I always stood up for him. Anyway I dumped him in the end. You don't want someone who is going to kick off all the time but at the very least you want someone with a bit of backbone.
I hope you get some resolution to this both with your boyfriend and the psychos from Ikea (both staff and customers) but I suspect that things will probably never be the same between you and the boyfriend because you have seen him act this way in a time of your need.
Hugs
Sky x

DavidF

lister wrote:

I haven't read all the replies yet, so maybe someone else has come out with this already. I also don't think you will want to hear this view, but here goes anyway

You probably won't be able to see this at the moment, but from where I am sat, it seems that you (and a number of other - mainly female it seems - posters) are really not very different from 'Vicky Pollard' et al. You have said several times that you would be 'in the front line' if friends and family were in a similar situation regardless of whether they are in the wrong or not. Is this not exactly what this bevy of well-bred ladies were doing? Once one took offence, rightly or wrongly, at something (in her own charming way of course), the others felt duty-bound to join in. You were expecting your OH to do the same, and escalate the situation further. That would be like trying to put out a fire with petrol.

The inability to back down, to me, is a dreaful human trait. It doesn't matter if you are right or wrong - escalating a conflict of any kind is almost never a successful strategy. This is exactly how neighbour disputes arise, how road rage arises, how pub brawls arise, how wars start - it affects human interaction on every scale.

To me, where your OH went wrong wasn't not coming forward to defend you, it was in not removing you from the situation. In his position I would have tried to get you to calm down and back down from the conflict. If you weren't prepared to give up the fight, I would simply have suggested we left, and would leave myself if you wouldn't come with me. To be honest, I suspect your OH was partly frightened by the situation and partly embarassed by it and simply didn't know what to do.

Backing down isn't a sign of weakness, it is a sign of strength. Escalating a dispute doesn't require any character, strength of mind, courage or skill - it is the easy option, and generally the wrong option. I am frankly quite shocked by the number of people on this thread (and I am only on page 2 so far) who seem to imply that they quite often get into disputes that might require intervention from a partner, friend, relative etc.

While I do repect the above opinion and that of those who have shown approval the point that i was making in any of my posts was to say that doing nothing at That moment was simply not an option. Even merely alerting the security guard at the 1st instance of trouble would have sufficed. I did also point out that if i was stood in the same queue i would have defended the injured and what could appear to be outnumbered party in this situation. I suppose this is from my hate of bullies. Defend can mean anything from a shout to the guard (Something along the lines of "Hey mate are you going to sort this situation out before it esculates ?"). Many times i have turned what could be potentially nasty situations on their heads by having a quiet word with security at different venues i have been at. I dont think that makes me aggressive. More like assertive. Sort the situation out please before someone else has to.

What a wonderfull world we would live in if we all could turn the other cheek but where do you draw the line ?

Contains_Mild_Peril

I confess I haven't read the whole of this thread, though I did read the opening post and a few of the replies.
Slinks, no wonder you were furious with Ikea staff. Even if a manager eventually sorted it out, the behaviour of staff who ridiculed you and refused to show their ID is obviously completely unacceptable, and you're quite right to make a written complaint. I'd be inclined to write to the local paper, too.
I do, however, agree with lister that your boyfriend was probably right not to get involved with the original altercation. If he'd told those women they were out of order, the situation may have become even more inflamed, and could have got really ugly; in fact if I and my husband were in your position, I'd be hoping that he wouldn't intervene at that point.
However, I also understand your hurt at his apparent lack of concern even afterwards. He should have been more supportive, and if he doesn't understand why you're upset with him, the two of you have a lot of talking to do. If you feel you've calmed down enough, maybe you could try to explain to him why his insensitivity upset you so much. Please don't expect it to suddenly dawn on him while you're not speaking to him!
You should try to understand him too, so if you don't know why he acted that way, ask him. It's possible that one reason he didn't want to talk about it was that he realised, with the magical benefit of hindsight, that he could have handled the situation better. While it would probably not have been helpful to confront the bullies in the queue, perhaps if he (after checking that no-one had objected) had come to stand beside you in the rearranged queue rather than leaving you to attempt to join him, the situation could have been defused early on. It possibly didn't even occur to him to offer to relinquish his place in the queue and join you, since he may have still had his mind on getting those chairs, and he might be a little embarrassed about it now.
I don't think the other poster's suggestion that he could have tried to lead you away from the trouble would have been appropriate, since that could have led to a scene between the two of you if you were to disagree, and if you meekly followed, it may appear to onlookers as though he felt you had done something wrong and/or were causing him embarrassment, though I suppose it would at least have demonstrated that he felt concerned enough to do something.
Though the chairs were not worth all that hassle, he might have felt that his pride (and yours) was, and that if the two of you left without chairs and the bullies got theirs, they would have won. He might have felt that such a scenario would be so deeply humiliating that it must be avoided at all costs, even if it meant failing to correct the security guard lest your boyfriend also be labelled a troublemaker and ejected from the queue.
He may have been quite perturbed by the whole experience, but wants to deal with it in his masculine way (sorry guys) by acting as though nothing happened.
My hypotheses about what may have been going on in his head could, of course, be completely wrong, but you probably won't know unless he tells you. If you want him to open up, you may have to be the one to offer an olive branch.
Good luck.

cboo

I sympathise with you, but also your bf. I work shifts and working night shift then having to go shopping and standing for 2 hours in a queue your oh was probably just concentrating on keeping his eyes open rather than looking around at what was going on.

I have been on a flight straight off nights and when at the airport, the amount of times I had to get people to repeat what they were saying to me was untrue, just barley concious it is very hard staying awake when you are that tired

You should talk to your boyfriend if it bothers you that much and spell out to him exactly what bothered you and what you want him to do in the future.

moggins

I've only just read this thread and was so amazed, it was like going back in time 20 years as my first husband did almost the same thing to me and although it wasn't the final reason we split (we lasted 5 years after this) it always preyed on my mind and I never got over it.

We were travelling to Germany on the night ferry (XDH was big strong army guy) and he was sitting in seats directly opposite me whilst I was cradling our sleeping toddler. Suddenly I am getting verbal abuse from three drunken male passengers who obviously thought I was alone and easy game.

I stared helplessly at my DH who just sat there and did nothing, not even coming over to sit by me to show that I wasn't alone, there are always subtle ways of showing support and strength without getting physical. Evenutally I was rescued by 3 crew members and I remember being too shocked and numb to even ask my DH why he hadn't helped me. I lost all respect for him then and I never recovered it.

My current DH is one of the gentlest men I have ever met and I would be shocked if he lost his temper but I know that I would have his full support and backing should anything like this ever happen again.