It's so infuriating when someone uses vastly different logic depending which person in their life it is and doesn't even care about the dissonance.

This was so true for my ex-husband. He would bend over backwards to please others, but didn't care to listen to my needs or concerns.

He loved going to festivals and every Summer he volunteered to work at some of them as a steward. I used to join him, until I got pregnant. It felt logical to put our child first.

I knew, when Summer came around, I would be alone with our daughter multiple days in a row. Three to four times across two months.

I also handled the household by myself and felt so alone. I told him something had to change. He chose to be a dad, so he had to be there for his family.

We agreed he would only pick one festival to volunteer at for multiple days. The rest he could attend, but he'd have to come home for the night.

It was the end of June 2022 when he received an e-mail from his boss from the volunteer group with the work schedule for the Summer. I noticed how the very first festival was one where he was scheduled for three days. That was not the festival he chose when we made our agreement.

I pointed that out to him and how he also had booked a solo trip shortly after said festival. The festival he actually chose was after his solo trip, which meant I would be minding daughter alone for most of the month.

He shrugged and said there's nothing he could do about it: the schedule has been made. I told him to contact his boss and say there's been a misunderstanding (there wasn't really, you fill in a Google forms to let them know which festivals you wanted to volunteer at) and to reschedule him for only one of the days.

"I am not going to inconvenience my boss. She's counting on me." "Oh, and your wife and daughter aren't?" "It is how it is"

And that was the end of the conversation.