shedd aquarium: So love him as I do, he鈥檚 the most STUBBORN s.o.b. on the planet!!!!!!! he's always right, is always doing "everything" etc. typical male basically. hahah. HOW on EARTH do you get a guy to sit down, first LISTEN to what you have to say without interrupting or getting mad, and then HEAR/comprehend it???? I've been with the guy for going n 4years and still have the hardest time trying to have really serious conversations with him. Here's the sitch. He is VERY close with his brother which I have always been very understanding about. HOWEVER, they talk on the phone at least once a day, txt each other all day long and hang out every day off they have. We both have long weekends this weekend because of the 4th. We decided to have a FAMILY fun weekend. We had planned to take M to the Milwaukee zoo, spend the night then go down to Chicago on Sun and go to the Shedd aquarium and a restaurant Chad's been DYING to try. Then two days later he picks up his phone dials and says, "I鈥檓 gonna see if my bro wants to come." so I ask, "come where?" "To Milwaukee." I didn't say anything because I knew it was pointless, but I was really disappointed. We work opposite shifts and hardly get time together so I REALLY wanted this. Then he tells me that Jessi (the bro) doesn't want to do that so can we go down to the Dells instead. Chad and I just went to the Dells two weekends ago!! At that point because I don't like confrontation and fighting! I just looked away. Later I mentioned that I didn't think it was a good idea because the plan that his bro made didn't really include Marcus. He said we could go to a water park and M would have fun there. Which is true! BUT I know for a fact that one of two things would happen. 1. Jessi would get bored and not have fun because we're doing kid friendly stuff, or 2. the two of them would go off and leave me alone with M. so how do I bring up to him that I don't want the brother to come without him getting upset??? He didn't even ask me in the first place if it was ok to invite his bro|||First of all Marcus is 20 months old so as long as you keep him interested, comfortable and moderately active and fed, he should be happy. If Marcus were older, it might be a different story - for example if you had promised a certain series of activities and then didn't keep the promise. Your problem is not that this guy is stubborn, it is that he is selfish and thoughtless and more interested in having fun with his brother than being with you. You, on the other hand, don't have a great sense of perspective on this either. It would have helped if your sequence of information had been different. 1) The two of you (?) planned a family activity which centered around you and X being together and in part centered around your son. The zoo makes a lot of sense. 2) Doing something which the two/three of you had not done together. 3) There's nothing wrong with including his brother except that this was family time for the 3 of you and no one else. 4) He wants to please his brother - his original family - more than he wants to please you and Marcus - his "adult" family. 5) It was bad enough that he invited Jessi but to totally change the plans was inconsiderate. I think that for this weekend, you probably need to tell Chad that you will compromise but that the summer isn't over and that you want a promise from him that just the three of you will go on the previously planned excursion. Sounds as if the two of you need some counseling which you will probably not get because I doubt if he is mature enough to recognize its importance to your relationship and because you have not learned how to say, we've got a problem. It doesn't sound as if you said, look we just went to the Dells and I would prefer to go to the zoo as we planned because that is a perfect outing for Marcus, your son Your compromise would be to say that Jessi could come with you on the originally planned trip. I think one problem you have is that if you are not married, you don't feel you have enough emotional and/or social leverage. And Chad will continue to be best buds with his brother because he isn't mature enough to recognize that his primary family responsibility is to his woman and son.|||Brava! Report Abuse