My Husband “Volunteered” Me To Be Free Daycare For His Entire Family Behind My Back. He Told Them I Was “Hormonal” When I Said No. Aita For Packing My Bags And Leaving Him With 6 Kids While He Went Golfing?

The Turning Point

Two days later my phone rang with a number I recognized as Philip’s. I answered and he started talking right away. He said he wanted to apologize for showing up that Saturday morning with his two kids. He said he genuinely didn’t know I hadn’t agreed to watch them. Derrick had made it sound like a done deal, like we’d all talked about it and worked out the details.

Philip said he felt terrible about putting me in that position. I sat down at my mom’s kitchen table. I told Philip I appreciated him calling. He said he’d been thinking about the whole situation since the family video call. He said he kept imagining how he would feel if his wife volunteered his time without asking him first. He admitted he wouldn’t like it at all. He said he understood why I was upset and why I left.

His apology felt real. I could hear in his voice that he actually got it. I thanked him for understanding and for calling. I told him it meant a lot that someone in Derrick’s family could see why this was a problem.

Philip said he was going to talk to Derrick about respecting my time and decisions. He said Derrick needed to hear from someone other than me that what he did wasn’t okay. This gave me a small bit of hope that maybe not everyone in the family was completely against me. Maybe some of them could understand boundaries and consent.

Three days after Philip’s call, Derrick showed up at my mom’s house again. This time he looked different. When I opened the door—more serious, less defensive—he asked if we could talk. I let him in and we sat in the living room.

He said Philip had called him and they’d talked for over an hour. He said Philip helped him see things differently. Derrick said he wanted to understand why this hurt me so much. I looked at him carefully, trying to figure out if this was real or just another attempt to get me to come home and go back to how things were.

I decided to try one more time to explain. I told him it wasn’t about helping family. I loved his family and I was happy to help when I could, but this was about him making commitments using my time without my consent, then dismissing my objections when I said no. It was about him treating my time and my choices as less important than his desire to look good to his family.

Derrick actually listened this time. He didn’t interrupt or argue. He sat there and nodded and looked at me while I talked. When I finished he was quiet for a minute. Then he admitted he hadn’t thought about it from my perspective. He said he’d been so focused on looking good to his family that he didn’t consider how his decisions affected me. He said he’d always felt pressure to be the helpful son and brother his whole life. His parents praised him when he stepped up for family. He said somewhere along the way he let that pressure override my needs and my right to make my own choices.

I told him I understood family pressure, I really did, but he couldn’t sacrifice my autonomy to manage his relationships with his family. He needed to be able to tell his family no sometimes, or at least ask me before volunteering me for things. His family’s approval couldn’t come at the cost of my consent and my boundaries.

Derrick nodded slowly. He said he was starting to see that now. I asked Derrick if he would go to couples counseling with me. He looked down at his hands for a long moment before nodding. He said he would call and make an appointment the next day. He also promised he would send a message to his entire family making it clear the child care arrangement was permanently over and that creating it was his mistake.

I felt something shift inside me when he said that. Not relief exactly, but maybe the smallest bit of hope that we could fix this.

Reconciliation and Counseling

Derrick called a counseling office the next morning and got us an appointment for the following week. He also drafted a message to send to his family. He showed it to me first and asked if it said what needed to be said. The message explained that he had volunteered my time without asking me, that this was wrong, and that there would be no family child care arrangement going forward. I told him it was good and he should send it. He hit send and then put his phone face down on the table like he didn’t want to see the responses coming in.

The following Tuesday we sat in the counseling office waiting for our first session. The therapist called us back and we sat on a couch across from her chair. She asked us to explain why we were there. Derrick looked at me and I looked at him. Finally I started talking. I explained the whole situation from the beginning.

The therapist listened without interrupting. When I finished she turned to Derrick and asked him to explain what he understood about why his actions were hurtful.

Derrick took a breath and said he violated my boundaries by making decisions about my time without asking. He said he treated my availability as something he could promise to other people without my consent. He said that wasn’t okay and he understood why I left. The therapist nodded and asked him some follow-up questions about how he thought I felt when family members kept showing up with their kids. Derrick admitted he hadn’t really thought about my feelings at the time because he was focused on looking helpful to his family.

Over the next several sessions, the therapist worked with us on how we communicate and make decisions. She pointed out that Derrick had a pattern of making choices and then informing me instead of discussing things together first. Derrick admitted this was true. He said he often decided what he thought was best and then told me about it rather than asking what I wanted.

The therapist helped him see that this approach treated me like someone who needed to be managed rather than a partner with equal say. Derrick said he never thought about it that way before but he could see how his behavior came across as controlling. The therapist gave us homework assignments about checking in with each other before making commitments that affected both of us. We went to counseling every week for two months.

During that time Derrick started to understand that his family’s expectations didn’t override my right to make my own choices about my time. He began setting boundaries with his family when they made demands. When his cousin called asking for a favor, Derrick said he needed to check with me first instead of just agreeing. When Ila texted about getting together, Derrick asked me if I wanted to go instead of telling her we’d be there. These small changes felt significant because they showed Derrick was actually trying to do things differently.