To have a go at DH for being mins late

[Chickpea99]

So I was amongst unlucky train commuters today and spent 2,5 hours in three trains - overcrowden, insanely hot.
On last leg of journey called DH and told exact time to pick me up. Actually told to come few mins earlier.
I finally arrived - and surprise - DH is not there.
We live 3mins drive from station.
He artives 8mins after I arrived at station. On my question what took him so long I receive cold ‘sorry’ and he says he was vacuuming a car at petrol station.
So he decided that vacuuming car was the top priority and also he did not bother to notify me he is running late.
I had a go at him as it is not first time. He has no sense of urgency and although 8mins is not horribly long, what angers me is attitude.
He says if he wouldnt vacuum the car - theI would be angry. So basically pushing it back on me.
I can not say how angry I am and basically this is going to ruin my weekend - as I can not talk to him atm.

If this was a man not one person would agree with him, not one

100% ^^

In these circumstances - and any similar - the desperate scramble to blame the man - no matter what - is very unhelpful.

The accusations of gaslighting and potential abuse - this is a man vacuuming a car, running a few minutes late and NOTHING else - are at best misguided and foolish. At worst, they risk diminishing the true nature of this behaviour. It can be insidious, but this ain't it.

Some ludicrous posts here.

You sound like a control freak. 8 minutes is nothing! I call 10 minutes late being on time.

I wouldn't mind someone being nearly 10 minutes late. I would have gone to the loo at the station and tried to minimise sweatiness, got a cold drink from vending/cafe and broke into an emergency cigarette. Then I'd be late

Hopefully it was a storm in a teacup and OP was only angry for half hour until she'd got home and had a cold drink.

You are all forgetting the OP had 2 and a half hours plus changing trains( probably some hanging about on platforms) on the hottest day of the year. That is the issue. It was exceptional circumstances and her DP didn’t have enough empathy to get there on time just for once

I am assuming there is more backstory. My OH is regularly 5 to 10 mins late to pick me from the station when my bags are too heavy for the 30 min walk. If he's got DC then it's acceptable, when he doesn't I find it irritating. However, this is with the background of my OH persistent lateness to the point where I pushed dinner back today by an hour and 50 mins after the rest of us sat down he's still not come in from the garden, which is a regular issue. He's also so late for any social events that I now no longer go out just the 2 of us as I am fed up of organising an event, arranging childcare and then turning up whenever he can be bothered to get ready. If this is the situation for you OP then I do have some sympathy!

Sounds like it's me you we're hot, tired and frazzled - hence your unreasonable behaviour

I would love to see the genders reversed on this thread. I don't think anyone would be flocking to the husband's defense if the roles were swapped here!

I would love to see the genders reversed on this thread. I don't think anyone would be flocking to the husband's defense if the roles were swapped here

Quite. I've mentioned that upthread.

@JuicyPop
The majority on here do think the OP is unreasonable and a spoiled brat .

It wouldn't matter if he was 11 minutes late from the requested because he was having a good long ball scratch in front of Netflix. It's only 11 minutes. Mild irritation for the 3 minutes to get home, fine.

For all we know, that was what he was actually doing, MRex.

You have forgotten the 2.5 hour, 3-train trio on the hottest day of the year. So have many others. The news featured stories about trains stopping so dehydrated passengers and passengers overcome by heat could be taken off and brought to hospital.

LOL at the posters trying the 'if this was a man' bollocks. If this was a man and if this wasn't the first time his wife had made him wait when he had said he would be there then his anger would have been justified too.

I hope the OP has managed to have a chat about how her H's behaviour leaves her seething.

Habitual lateness is passive aggressive and corrosive in a relationship. On such a hot day and after such a marathon on top of previous form from her H she was perfectly justified in questioning the entire basis of the relationship.

I can't believe this is still going 🙄

My ex husband worked in London and I'd have to pick him up from a rural station as it was too far to walk home and there were no buses.
Time and again he'd ring to say pick me up at such and such a time and I'd be waiting at the station for half an hour for him as he's got the time wrong after an exhausting day at work myself.
Got so fed up with it, occasionally I'd fall asleep while waiting for him to ring and i'd be late then he'd go mental.
I know full well if the situation had been reversed he would have picked me up late every day.
Sometimes the train would be cancelled and I'd have to drive half an hour or more to another rural station. It really did cause loads of arguments between us but wasn't really anyone's fault.
i think it's best just to put it behind you, although I can understand why you are pissed off I would pick your battles, it was under q0 minutes, not an hour or anything and you were tired.
There are more important things to row about.

Just seen this thread even though it was days ago.

I hope you've apologised and having a nice weekend with your DH.

I agree with the majority of posters here for all the reasons they gave you. YABU but hopefully it was just the heat, I think we were all grouchy on Thursday.

@mathanxiety "You have forgotten"

No, I most certainly have not, please don't leap to assumptions just because I disagreed with you. I've spent many many pre-baby years travelling long distances for work. You can also look at my post on this thread where I described my regular 2.5 hour commute while pregnant because of rail works 2 summers ago. I am very aware of how it is to be baking hot and tired, being out on the fresh air near to home is a great relief and anyone in control of their temper should be perfectly capable of waiting the highly specific 8 minutes to be picked up in the fresh air without having their aggression spike to unacceptable levels as has happened here with OP.

You have forgotten the 2.5 hour, 3-train trio on the hottest day of the year.

That’s no excuse for being so unreasonable that on Thursday your DH being 8 minutes late to drive you 3 minutes home that your weekend is ruined because you won’t be able to talk to him.

That’s just ridiculous.

Well said mrex. It’s massively patronising to be informed we have ‘forgotten’.

You have forgotten the 2.5 hour, 3-train trio on the hottest day of the year

True. And we have all forgotten that the OP was the only person commuting that day, on a train, in the heat. No one else was in the same boat. Not one.

lyralalala
The same could be said for the OP who clearly was quite happy to have her other half jump to attention when her disrupted travel plans finally ended.

Why do you say 'jump to attention'?

Are you assuming the OP called within a few minutes of the home station?

She said she called during the last leg of her 3-train journey. That does not necessarily mean the last 15 minutes; it means during the last train trip when she presumably had some indication as to her ETA.

You have no evidence at all on which to base the accusation that the OP expected her H to drop everything, or 'jump to attention'.

For all anyone knows she gave him an hour's notice.

OP is never coming back

NeckPainChairSearch Sat 27-Jul-19 21:29:32
You have forgotten the 2.5 hour, 3-train trio on the hottest day of the year

True. And we have all forgotten that the OP was the only person commuting that day, on a train, in the heat. No one else was in the same boat. Not one.

What's that supposed to mean?

That you know for a fact that nobody else was as pissed off as the OP was when someone prioritised a chore that could have been done any time instead of coming to meet them at the station?

Not everybody who is pissed off at being made to wait for a promised lift after a 2.5 hour train marathon posts on MN you know...

lyralalala
It was three minutes drive but 15 minutes walk with a full backpack on her back and a suitcase.

But let's keep on minimising the selfishness of this H because apparently it's unacceptable for women to call callous selfishness and gaslighting what they are.

@VivienneHolt I agree with your posts.

Mathanxiety We've all commuted. We've all known hot, long days. We've all known irritation. We've all been pissed off.

The OP's reaction was extraordinary. It couldn't be more obvious that her explosive reaction is really quite abnormal in the great scheme of things.

If someone I knew acted like this because their partner was 8 minutes late, I'd think they were fucking unhinged.

But let's keep on minimising the selfishness of this H because apparently it's unacceptable for women to call callous selfishness and gaslighting what they are

Gaslighting? Are you actually serious? Feel free to respond to the question I asked Vivienne upthread, who has declined to answer, on HER accusation of the DH vacuuming the car as being 'gaslighting leading to abusive behavior.'

Which you would also do to a woman, picking up her husband and running 8 minutes later because she was vacuuming the car to avoid him getting annoyed about it; and was then told that her DH would ruin the weekend by still being angry 3 days later that she picked him up a few minutes late? You would accuse her of gaslighting and being potentially abusive?

This woman is gaslighting, yes? ^^. Picking up her fuming, too-angry-to- speak husband, after she vacuumed the car? You're calling 'gaslighting' right?

*But let's keep on minimising the selfishness of this H because apparently it's unacceptable for women to call callous selfishness and gaslighting what they are.

The only minimising that’s being done is the threat from the OP to refuse to speak to her DH for the whole weekend from Thursday because he was late by less than 10 minutes because he hoovered the car.

The silent treatment for a whole weekend over a minor issue is callous and selfish.

Calling the OP’s overreaction as calling out her DH’s gaslighting completely minimises what true gaslighting actually is.

The fact that OP declared that he had ruined her weekend on Thursday because she wouldn’t be able to speak to him all weekend over this is being completely ignored by so many people.

If a woman posted on here that she’d been late to pick her DH him by 8 minutes and he deemed her apology unworthy so gave her the silent treatment for the whole weekend from Thursday the responses would be full of “tell him to get a taxi” or “ltb”.

Giving someone the weekend long silent treatment isn’t acceptable just because she’s a woman