The situation escalated during the daughter’s Senior Award Ceremony when the husband repeatedly clicked and tapped a pen throughout the event, despite pleas from both his wife and daughter to stop. After the ceremony, the daughter expressed anger, leading the husband to ignore her completely and threaten to withhold the final portion of her college tuition as punishment for her ‘attitude.’ The OP is now caught in the middle, facing extreme tension at home and questioning whether her threat of divorce over his behavior and threats was an overreaction.
Me and my husband (46F, 49M) have a 17 year old daughter who’s leaving for college soon, but my husband’s been ignoring her since her Senior Award Ceremony back in mid April.
My husband is someone who loves making noises for no reason. He hums, whistles, taps his fingers or a pen, snaps, claps, literally anything to make noise. He does this constantly. Our daughter has misophonia and hates any kind of repetitive noises.
This isn’t just mild annoyance, she’s in therapy and has even been medicated in the past to try and cope with this. Her main trigger is especially pen clicking.
My daughter is always either in her room or wearing headphones because my husband can’t refrain himself from making noises that trigger her when she’s around.
The issue is back in April my daughter had an award ceremony because she was in the top 10% of her graduating class. During the ceremony, my husband brought along a pen and kept making noise with it during the whole ceremony.
He was clicking it, snapping the metal clip over and over, and drumming it on the edge of the seat. I told him several times to stop, but he just told me it wasn’t a big deal.
It WAS a big deal because the ceremony was held in a small gym with a loud echo, so the sound was very loud. Everyone could hear it and he did it the whole time. During the speeches, the awards being handed out, the pledge and alma mater speech.
My daughter was sat next to us before she got called up, and kept asking her dad to stop, but he told her to be quiet. When she was called up and he kept doing it she kept glaring at us from on the platform and mouthing at us to stop.
My husband only stopped after the ceremony and the students were released back to their seats.
My daughter didn’t talk to her dad for the rest of the night, and in the morning he called her rude for not talking to him after he took off work to attend the ceremony. She blew up at him and said he ruined it because she couldn’t be happy during the ceremony because of his noise.
She said she hates how he can’t stop for five minutes when it’s an important event.
Since then, my husband’s been ignoring her and refusing to help with college packing and preparing. A few days ago, he says he doesn’t think we should pay the last bit of her tuition because of her attitude problem towards him and that she needs to learn her actions have consequences.
I blew up at him and said I’m going to divorce him if he doesn’t grow up and apologize to our daughter. I said that he was the one who was rude for making noises our daughter can’t stand at her award ceremony and for ignoring her when she was rightfully mad.
I also said that he’d been insane for wanting to make her pay for college because she doesn’t have that kind of money and we had always promised her that we’d cover it if she got it down to under 5,000 a year (her yearly tuition cost is roughly 2,500 a year with all her scholarships)
He’s now refusing to talk directly with either of us but is still making comments about not paying the tuition with his money and that I’ll have to use my salary to cover it.
The whole house is tense, and I’m wondering if I was actually the asshole for threatening divorce. We were both raised Catholic and even though we don’t really practice anymore divorce is still something we always agreed is a last case in major situations and not petty arguments.
Conclusion
The OP finds herself in a difficult position, caught between supporting her daughter, who was deeply disrespected during an important milestone, and managing her husband’s punitive and emotionally withdrawn behavior. The conflict highlights a major breakdown in parental support and respect, forcing the OP to weigh her husband’s actions against their long-held personal beliefs regarding the finality of divorce.
The central debate revolves around whether the husband’s deliberate disruption of his daughter’s ceremony, followed by emotional withdrawal and financial threats, constitutes a major situation warranting extreme measures, or if the OP’s threat of divorce was disproportionate to the underlying disagreement. Readers must consider where the line is drawn between parental boundaries and punitive action.
Here’s how people reacted:
Your husband is a very selfish and thoughtless man. He would have been annoying everyone within earshot with his goddamn pen clicking and he’s just lucky I wasn’t there to hear it.
He is the adult in this situation! His threats to pull financial support are really over the top and wildly disproportionate to the situation.
I’d be pointing out to him that your daughter was mature enough to go through with therapy for her issues, what a shame that a grown man doesn’t have the same maturity and insight to seek to improve himself.
I bet there are a lot of people at work and in your social circles that strongly dislike your husband for his clueless and selfish behaviours but they like you too much to upset you by telling you.
Father – makes useless unneeded noises all the time, around a child with ACTUAL condition (misophonia) that cannot stand random repetitive noises? I’d suggest he’s been doing it on purpose..because you’d think if your child was diagnosed and suffers from that you’d stop trying to push their buttons when they’ve been in therapy about it. Or just if you were a decent human.
And the final disrespect is at a school event where she should have felt on top of the world, and so proud of herself and yet all she could focus on was the obscene fuckwit she has to call a father that sits there and blatantly disregards all of her feelings. Does he treat all women like this or…her? This is a serious problem. Your husband is a serious problem and yeah YTA if you don’t either get him help, or get the fuck away. Kids gotta go to college and never come home, you will both be disregarded.
You let it go on for far too long. For him to stop after the ceremony he knew what he was doing. Why you’d think to only threaten divorce is beyond me. I could see if he had ocd or some other issue with repetition. He just sounds like an asshole.
Don’t let him ruin your child’s experience because he wants to be a turd. I’d force him to get counseling to see why he hates her or I’m moving out. You’re still young enough to find someone with some sense!
I’m willing to bet 100 bucks, this isnt the only time, or the only thing he does to annoy you and your daughter- and that this has been his MO since before your daughter was born. You just let it slide because it was easier or because “it isnt that big of a deal”.
Either way he is behaving like an AH now but which one it is will determine how big of an AH he was then and whether or not he is just a stubborn AH or a vicious, narcissistic and abusive AH.
As a mother- you better decide if you want to protect your daughter from his stupidity or his abuse.
NTa
Your daughter has to wear headphones around the house or seclude herself to her room because he can’t refrain himself from making noises, or because he won’t?
The pen incident seems intentional.
For what ever reason I’m seeing here that he wants your daughter to be in a tough place, I’d go as far as to say he was intentionally trying to sabotage this moment for her.
Also you should’ve just ripped the pen out of his hands.
None of that justifies him being an AH of course, or not making an effort to not ruin her ceremony for her, or holding a grudge about it. But maybe he’s lashing out because of his own frustration about his inability to control himself.
If he refuses to pay the tuition, I would walk. He can spend his life as a lonely, angry man whose daughter wants nothing to do with him. NTA
Why would he continually click a pen when it has such an intense effect on his daughter, on a night that was about her, that he took work off for?
He could literally get one of those fidget rings with beads on them if his hands need to do something.
And then pay tuition out of your salary? JC what a child.
Perhaps this was intended to give him an excuse to withdraw support for her college education.
He’s a coercive and controlling a**h○le.
NTA