To not understand the obsession with driving / red flag if partner doesn’t drive?

It's not a red flag, but weirdly every person I know who has never learnt to drive are people that get very stressed easily and have little resilience. I know it's a coincidence but I have to remember that all non-drivers aren't like that!

the question wouldn’t even come up because if it is just a necessity then everyone would drive anyway
The point being that for some people it isn't a necessity purely because they let their friends/family/partner ferry them about. These are the lazy sods unlikely to make a good partner hence it's a red flag to avoid someone like that.

It works for you in your situation living in London. But for many it wouldn't work and the burden of driving would all fall onto one partner if the other did not drive. For context we live eight miles from the nearest shop. No public transport. So the non driver would be entirely dependent the driver for transport.

It’s a huge red flag on MN and a smaller one in real life. I don’t drive and have had partners who did, couldn’t, or didn’t want to - it really makes very little difference. Public transport is pretty good where I live and I travel throughout my county and the next.

I’m getting rather fed up with being told I’m not independent by elderly ladies who can’t even go to the cinema unaccompanied.

It doesn't count in London but I think if it's combined with other ManChild things it can be a red flag, e.g can't drive, believes in conspiracy theories, has a fear of getting a mortgage or basically a fear of being an adult

I don't remember asking for your opinion, it's not safe for me to drive, so I don't do it.

My mum got her licence at 18 in 1966. By 1984 she had 2 children under 5 and my dad had still no inclination to learn how to drive so she put her foot down and told him he needed to step up and get his licence so he could ferry us around too. Which he did because he recognised it was indeed hugely unfair.

Would it have been different if they lived in London? Yes, obviously. OP you can't really be so naive not to see how living in a massive city with extensive public transport is different to most other places?

Seems a bit of a goady post 🙄 it obviously depends where you live. I live in the countryside where the nearest proper supermarket is 10 miles away and buses are one an hour (if it actually turns up) so it’s hard to live here and not drive.

My ex didn’t drive and it was so annoying having to go out of my way all the time to drop him off, pick him up etc - I’ve always said never again because I want to share driving not be the only one responsible for it.

As others have said, you are missing the point of those threads.

It’s about imbalance when one person can’t drive, but expects the other person to do so.

Having to do all the driving to EVERYTHING.
And taken for granted
Especially when you are not in London / public transport hub
Especially especially when you are balancing multiple kids.

Eh? Someone who lives in a capital city with all the public transport at their fingertips doesn’t understand why anyone else would need a car and have to drive? SMH.

My experience of the tube is that there's one every few minutes for the majority of the day on most lines, and some run fairly frequently through the night too.

Our closest bus route is every 2 hours between 7am and 7pm Monday to Saturday, and none on a Sunday. The bus goes to the nearest town centre, if we want to go anywhere else we need to change bus there. No train station. No tube.

I wouldn't date someone who had chosen not to drive. Different if they couldn't drive for some reason.

I wouldn't call it a red flag, as I see that as more about their behaviour or beliefs. However, I wouldn't date anyone who couldn't drive as I haven't got the time, money or energy to be doing all the legwork around meeting up and public transport here is almost nonexistent.

Not everyone lives in london.

Personally, it would be more of a red flag if someone said that they couldn't drive but not that they don't. Plenty of people don't drive as they don't need to,however not having learned what can be seen as an essential life skill (emergencies etc) would be a red flag to me!

I didn’t drive for first 10 years of my relationship, I’ve driven the last 10, and realise what a burden it must have been for him.

I love the freedom to just go anywhere at anytime, so many places are just not accessible by public transport.

If you both don’t drive and don’t care too much about visiting remote places it’s not a red flag at all.

Not everyone on Mn is a rich child free couple living in London 🙄.

If you were a family with 3 young kids and an elderly mother living in rural wales / Lincolnshire / Aberdeenshire you might feel differently.

Driving is really not that hard. I have ADHD, haven’t done anyone serious damage in 30 odd years

It's not a red flag imo, but it's potentially very inconvenient. There's probably much more stigma attached to a man not driving than a woman though. Some people still have ludicrously old-fashioned, sexist views about such things.

I agree with you. I dislike driving and don't consider myself to have much aptitude for it. Although I still have a driving licence because it's useful for ID, I haven't driven at all for at least 6 years (and before that only occasionally) and don't intend to drive again. DH has a car and does drive sometimes but probably not as much as most people with cars do - only if we are going somewhere rural that cannot be accessed by public transport and is too far to walk. Within the town, we both normally walk or take buses. He occasionally does a "big shop" with the car but I really prefer to buy little and often, fresh food that's exactly what we want, and bring it home on foot. DH does not resent the fact that I choose not to drive, in fact he is very supportive of my decision given that I've never felt confident driving and am objectively not much good at it. (That is not code for "he rubbished my driving and begged me to stop"!)

If anything happened to DH and I was considering looking for another man, I would actively prefer one who did not own a car and did not want a driving-based lifestyle. This is because (1) he could not possibly think any less of me for not wanting to drive myself and (2) I think not driving is probably greener anyway.

I do realise that it would be thoroughly impractical for anyone living in a rural area, but I would never choose to live in a rural area, or with someone who seemed like they might want to move to a rural area one day. Even my medium-sized town is not really big enough for the city girl I am at heart, for lots of reasons, not all of them anything to do with transport.

You live in London OP, and most people don’t

Tell me you knew this, else I’m seriously fecking worried for you re your lack of knowledge of the rest of the country

On here it's a red flag if you don't drive until you get to about 60 then it's a red flag if you do

Do you have kids ? I live in a city (not London) with a very sporty kid and the driving to training and competitions is constant, week in week out. I'm the only driver and it puts a lot of pressure on me. You couldn't depend on a team mate, in fact we all share lifts anyway and we are still at full tilt. So for me it's a parenting thing.

I don't drive. It would be a very bad idea because of my ADHD, especially since I'm also in perimenopause and it really affects my ability to focus. Driving requires multiple points of focus, and I'd end up in an accident.

I annoys me when folks say not driving is a red flag, it's expensive as fuck to buy, run, and maintain a car, it's not attainable for everyone, and it's not necessarily safe depending on an individual's situation. If someone judges you for not driving, tell them to stick it up their sanctimonious arse.

I’m American and don’t drive (due to a visual-spatial disorder) and here it’s extremely uncommon. People react as though I said “I can’t read” when I tell them.

Obviously for me it isn’t a red flag, but it is difficult. I live in a very small town with literally zero public transportation (no one does Uber etc, let alone any kind of train or bus) but it’s manageable because I can walk almost everywhere, plus my husband and now our oldest son drive. I think having kids here would be next to impossible with no drivers in the house, honestly.

When our children are grown I’d actually like to move to a city with great public transportation.