Slow Faffing DH

[LibbyVonTrap]

DH seems to do everything in slow motion. He’s always faffing!!
Example - we step off a plane in the USA - airport is surprisingly quiet - there are no queues at security …. I can’t believe our luck and start making my way to security only for DH to shout me back. I turn to find him stood with paperwork in hand glancing around saying “hold on a minute, we need to work it out” … at that point a huge crowd of people are rushing towards him heading for security. We ended up right at the back of the queue.

Another example - we went to a famous isolated beach in Thailand - was told we would only have 30 minutes on the beach before we would have to leave again. Everyone jumped off the boat and went swimming (swimming at this place is a once in a lifetime thing). We get off the boat, I start stripping off to go swimming and DH says “hold on a minute, we need to find a toilet first and then we should sort the bags out”. Already sick of his faffing by now I said “nope! Going swimming! Cya!” and left him stood there on the beach looking all concerned.

Another example - we were late for a dog training session. Started at 10am - 15 minute drive - it’s now 09:45. I’m shouting at him “hurry up!!! We’re going to be late!!!” He comes out saying “ok ok, I’m coming”. He gets out the house, locks the door and then looks at his shoes and starts brushing muck off them as if we have all the time in the world!!

Why does he do this?? He also likes to get to cinema after the film has started. Drives me insane.

@BrightYellowDaffodil

It strikes me from this thread how many of these faffers and ditherers are men. Are they socialised to be this useless or to expect the world to revolve around them, or is it a conscious decision to be so ineffectual that someone - a woman - will come along and sort everything out for them?

They’re not. It’s just that the majority of people on this thread are women wile male partners talking about their experiences

There are a million threads on a million sites about this, women do it equally as much

@Sonex

The one that really winds me up is deciding needs a poo at the exact time.we have to leave to be on time for something. I also lie and bring times forward by half an hour so that we aren't late.

I have one of these.

Worse - he chivvies me on "We have to leave at X o'clock. Don't forget we have to leave at X o'clock. Will you be ready to leave at X o'clock. Come on! It's nearly X o'clock!"

Then when I'm in the car by 10 to X, with kids and dogs, ready to leave, he says, "I'll just nip* to the toilet" and be in there for 40 minutes, before coming out complaining that we're going to late.

*He has never "nipped" to the toilet. He is always ages.

@AcrossthePond55

Mine doesn't make us late, he rushes us both around to get ready to leave, then just as we're getting coats on to walk out the door he starts faffing about, forgetting keys/packages/some stupid thing, or he suddenly remembers he MUST do 'X important thing' before we leave. He used to rush me into the car and THEN decide he's not ready. Now I won't get in the car until he's in with his seatbelt fastened.

I now get ready 20-30 minutes before we leave, except for my coat and purse, then I sit in the living room with a drink/cup of coffee, reading or MNing, completely ignoring his mad rushing around doing Very Important Last Minute Things. It drives him mad.

We've been married over 35 years. He's not going to change. So I did.

Yep - story of my life, too.

My DH does this as well to a lesser extent, especially the poo thing yet he’s dynamic in a work environment, I don’t get it and it drives me insane!

@NormaSnorks

The going to the loo thing just before going out drives me mad!!

When the kids were little DH would say "you get the kids in the car and I'll lock up" then we'd be sitting on the driveway for 10 minutes while he'd go for a leisurely poo!
I started to reverse it, "oh, I've got to grab something from upstairs, YOU get them in the car and I'LL lock up..." and it used to make him LIVID .
After that I just refused to leave the house until we were ALL ready in the hallway, DH included.

I'm sure there was some control/ patriarchal stuff going on too though.

The loo thing is annoying but women do it too. I have at least 2 friends who announce they need the loo when we need to be somewhere, after having sat about for x amount of time. I just go to where I need and refuse to wait for them. They can catch up! I refuse to rush and be last minute, I have ADD/dyspraxia myself and the only strategy for coping with it is to be obsessively early for everything!

I am finding these precision timed shits a fascinating biological phenomenon.

How on earth can they command their bowel to evacuate at 13:58 precisely?

Do they deliberately hold it all in that day?

My Mum was/is like this.

We would always be late for school, late to be picked up, late to be dropped off, dropped in the wrong place, late to events etc.

I used to be sent into the school entrance by myself because she was too embarrassed to take me in for the third time that week because 'I'd' made us late.

You can't invite her to things on time she'll purposely be late, you can't get a lift because she isn't reliable to be there.

We missed a train to London for a very important event when DH and I were engaged and we'd made the mistake of agreeing to the lift, which she'd insisted on giving us. She was ten minutes late, then took the long way around, then purposely (has lived in the city for forty years) took a wrong turn.
We arrived just as the train pulled out the station and she was most aggrieved that we attempted to change the tickets rather than get in the car to 'race the train to the next stop'. It was like a game and never did we take a lift from her again - we were in our very early twenties and grotesquely naive.

Growing up was realising I'm not a late person, she is.

The loo thing is annoying but women do it too. I have at least 2 friends who announce they need the loo when we need to be somewhere, after having sat about for x amount of time. I just go to where I need and refuse to wait for them. They can catch up! I refuse to rush and be last minute, I have ADD/dyspraxia myself and the only strategy for coping with it is to be obsessively early for everything!

To be fair I think that one's a bladder/pelvic floor issue thing - my mum wants to go to the loo at the very last minute before we leave, but that's because she knows she only has a set amount of time before she next needs to go and so if she 'sets the clock ticking' any earlier than she needs to she's more likely to need to go during the journey or at some other inconvenient point. For the same reason it's really anxiety-inducing for her if she's all ready to leave, including having gone to the loo, and then someone else starts faffing and delaying - which is why she'll go once everyone else is ready and not before.

The thing is when women go to the loo they're only in there a few seconds (if it's just a wee) so it's not much of a delay. When men go for a poo, well it takes them half the day!

I jettisoned my faffer years ago.

He wouldn't be pinned down to a time. It was always "I'll be there later" then the doorbell would go hours after I'd given up on him. He came down to visit the DC's and stayed at a hotel, and only saw DC's for a few minutes in the evening both days because he'd spent the whole day "getting situated", and driving off to find a Morrisons for his breakfast and lunch when the town has countless cafes and restaurants.

We went on holiday with him and were stuck indoors for hours every morning while he shaved for 45 minutes, examined his back hair in the mirror, examined a near invisible mark that had been on his eyeball for decades to see if it had got better or worse in the last few hours, sat on the toilet singing to himself, made a cup of tea then sat watching it until it was safely lukewarm enough to drink, fluffed his hair, went out to stare at his car from all angles and prod the tyres. I felt like the victim of a very slow torture.

I feel almost giddy reading these stories and appreciating how free I am!

Omg I need to stop reading these comments but I can't. It's like watching a train wreck. I literally cannot understand how someone can use faffing as control, but I suppose I believe it.

My DH is like this. I think it's a combination of anxiety and executive functioning issues due to probable undiagnosed autism.

I've found holidays really difficult because of the faff. Fair enough I'm naturally up early, I don't expect the rest of the family to be frog marching out of the door at 8am, however I do like to make the most of the days! My house is really nice, nicer than most holiday accommodation, I don't pay £££ to sit about in it all day, we need to be out doing stuff! Regularly the rest of my family won't get their shit together until 2pm or later. Them we'll be rushing to get to stuff before it closes. I now book activities in the morning so they have to be up and out. A recent holiday I booked something at 10.00 which was an hour's drive away and we needed to be there half an hour early. The entire family commented how nice it was to be out in the morning and to have the rest of the day to relax! We now have a deal on holiday to be out for 11am latest. Still too late for me but am compromising. Unfortunately the DC have inherited the faff gene.

Omg my DH is the king of faffing!!!

Slow motion doesn’t even go far enough. We will be needing to leave the house n it’s like a full 15 minutes to put shoes on n faff about seeing r they comfy? R they the shoes he wants to wear today ? Does he like driving in those shoes ? More fiddling n faffing cuz he’s tied his shoes too tight/too loose !! Then finally we are ready to leave…. My hands touch the door handle and tah dah !!! DH now needs a poo ….. it drives me crazy !!i always say to him in an energency I could leave this house in 30 seconds, u couldn’t leave the house in less than 30 mins !!

Worst of it is…. He only gets himself ready !! I bloody get myself and baby ready

God mine is an anti-faffer, and it's just as stressful. Say we need to be somewhere at 10.30, and it's 20 minutes away. I'll say 'let's leave at 10' so I've already built delay time in. At 5 to 10 he is car keys in hand out the door huffing at me for delaying us - even though I've got 5 minutes before we even need to leave at the time that has delay buffer built in anyway!! I think because I take longer to get ready he assumes I'm delaying us when really I'm still on time, just a bit behind him. Infuriating.

What annoys me is my DH is a faffer butthinkshe's the organised onehe'll be like come on we need to go as if he's been ready for ages and I've been faffing, when in reality all he's done is get himself ready and I've got myself ready and the communal stuff,thenwhen I'm standing in the hallway coat on keys in hand he'll be all "two seconds, I just need to...[go to loo/do xyz]. So annoying on two counts.

This is like my DH. If for example we're going to the beach, he'll be huffing, tutting, sighing , fidgeting making loads of (non worded) signs that he's impatiently waiting for me to be ready and that he is obviously ready (because he has picked up his phone wallet and keys)
In the car, or when we're at the beach, he'll say "did we bring sunscreen? What about a hat for ? Have we got both beach mats? How many towels have we got? Did we put a bottle of water in?" It's always worded as if we had made a collective effort to pack when he knows full well he just picked up his phone wallet and keys!

I'm sure in some cases there is neurodivergence at play but i'd hazard a guess that more often than not, it is male privilege at play.

DD has dyslexia and inattentive ADHD, and planning and sequencing doesn't come naturally to her. However she also has empathy and a social conscience and decided for herself to take measures to avoid pissing everyone off by faffing.

DS has a different disability and can be prone to faffing and getting lost in his own world but is totally capable of planning ahead not to inconvenience anyone else...

I totally agree that plenty of women are faffers too. I see it in loads of colleagues. I don’t see it as a control thing, generally ( though it can be) but I think some people are wired that way, basically missing any sense of urgency. I’m sure my lack of patience is equally frustrating to others at times. I have ADHD, I need things to keep moving.

However I don’t assume that that hairdressers were born with this magic ability, I assume they learned the correct technique and then practised it over and over again for years

I’d not shrug my shoulders, complain that I was born without the blow drying gene and play games instead on my phone

Yes this is my view. I'm not naturally tidy, I have to work at it. I'm not perfect anyway but I do make the effort and don't make it someone else's job.

I don't think its exclusive to men but IME its much commoner in men, possibly because women tend to enable that faffing by bending over backwards to "manage" them. These men hold down jobs, often quite senior jobs. I work with men in senior positions who laugh when they say "I'd never make it on if didn't organise everything". They would be horrified if it were thought they couldn't plan or organise in the workplace.

As Jane Austen put it My fingers,'' said Elizabeth, do not move over this instrument in the masterly manner which I see so many women's do. They have not the same force or rapidity, and do not produce the same expression. But then I have always supposed it to be my own fault -- because I would not take the trouble of practising. It is not that I do not believe my fingers as capable as any other woman's of superior execution.''

[quote tcjotm]@AngelinaFibres I had a connecting flight and the first leg was delayed because we had to abort our landing due to wind shear and we did a white knuckled turn around the airport before a safe landing. And then the flight attendant apologetically said that people with the connection to the next city had to run to our other gate. About 20 of us had to run to board a plane ready for take off. Oh the glowering stares! I wanted to tell them all that we spent 15 minutes expecting to crash land, our nerves were shot and we hadn’t been near the airport bar, much as we really really wanted to! I am never late, it wasn’t my fault!! 😂[/quote]
No no it's not people like you with connecting flights ,trains ,busses that are delayed beyond their control. Things like that are always announced so the rest of us know why we are waiting and we have all been there at one time or another . Its the people who hear the call for boarding and decide to have a coffee,go to duty free and buy 5 different types of perfume and a designer bag, phone a friend etc instead of getting on the plane like everyone else. What goes through their head.

My best friend is a faffer! And dithers over everything. I love her dearly and couldn’t be without her but oh my, this is where we clash.
We’ve been on a few holidays together.
One was a sunshine holiday. Pool and beach in the day, so I’m not one who has to be up at the crack of dawn. I do however like to make the most of it and like to nab a decent sunned spot. I remember the first morning, we both naturally woke up about 8:30. I went in bathroom first, took less than ten minutes and came out. Told her the bathroom was hers and I started to slather on the sun cream and getting dressed. 45 minutes later she emerged. I was creamed up, hair done, bikini on and dress over top, pool bag ready and ready to go to breakfast and to the pool. I had even read half a magazine. She looked like she had done hardly anything and certainly hadn’t got sun cream on or anything.
I said we should go to the pool and put towels down etc then get brekky. 20 minutes later she still wasn’t dressed as she was rearranging clothes and planning outfits and going back and forth on book choice. So I went down, reserved a couple of beds and she said she would come meet me when ready and go for breakfast.
I start a book by the pool and soon realise it’s 10:45 and breakfast finishes as 11. I text her and ask if she’s ready. She says no. We’ve been awake for over 2 hours!
So I say I’m starving, I’ll meet her there and grab her some food before the buffet is cleared. I end up eating and taking her a package back to the pool because she never makes it down.
She arrives at the pool at 11.55. I was baffled. I asked her if she was ok because what on earth takes nearly 4 hours on holiday to do just to come to the pool?? Her response was she had to shave and cut her toe nails and do her hair and wanted her stuff to be in order....
I mean thankfully this was a chilled holiday but, even though she came to breakfast after, she never made it down to the pool before midday. Such a waste of her time. I had to get quite pushy when we had a boat trip booked.

When we did a city holiday, I was quite keen to be on the move earlier so that we wouldn’t be stuck in line for hours for certain attractions. That was tricky. I was watching what she did as I sat there fully dresses and ready and it was all just so painfully slow. We ended up spending a lot of time in lines, or at the end of the line while she dithered as to whether it was now worth joining the queue or not.

It’s a bit of a touchy subject because her whole family are like this so it’s just what she’s used to. I can’t live like that!

No no it's not people like you with connecting flights ,trains ,busses that are delayed beyond their control. Things like that are always announced so the rest of us know why we are waiting and we have all been there at one time or another . Its the people who hear the call for boarding and decide to have a coffee,go to duty free and buy 5 different types of perfume and a designer bag, phone a friend etc instead of getting on the plane like everyone else. What goes through their head.

DH and I still giggle, and blush, about the time we were at the airport early. Checked in, did security, etc etc. Went to get food. All the while congratulating ourselves on being on time, no stress, no rushing etc.... except while sitting to eat we somehow lost a whole lot of time and the next thing they were saying, "will the final 4 passengers for flight ABC please make their way to the gate"... and the gate was MILES away. We were MORTIFIED.

I think a huge factor in inefficient doing stuff (like stacking stuff in sink only to then load it all in dishwasher) is having too much time and too few responsibilities.

If it became a choice between time to go out cycling Vs stacking and restacking stuff... In my experience that soon solves the problem.

Someone stepping in to accommodate the faffing or just going "ah DH, you daft brush, you, let me show you how!" Indulges the faffer and places the boring burden on the non faffer.

God, I loathe faffers who impinge on others' time! overinvested, projecting, I do realize this

Didn't know this was so common, DH is the same. The main one is going to brush his teeth when we are already late and all the kids are all ready strapped in the car as he said he was ready.

In general I find our productivity levels so different. On Sunday I fed newborn, dressed toddler, hoovered the entire house then played with them for a couple of hours. During that time he had put the baby swing away into its box. Thats it. And the box wasn't even back in the loft yet. So he said to make up for it he would clean the bathroom but he was gone a couple of hours doing that while I juggled both kids, hanging laundry and making lunch.

It's infuriating but I feel bad even saying anything as he is genuinely trying to be as helpful as possible.

I wonder if it's a man thing or just a personality thing.

I'm really laid back in life but always early to appointments/events etc... as I see it as a BASIC respect thing to not keep people waiting.

My DH is the exact opposite he flaps and faffs with EVERYTHING and is always late as a result and he gets mad at me for not flitting around with him.

He gives himself a million and one jobs to do (things I don't deem important or not urgent at the time) but he martyrs himself over them and whines no one 'helping' when we are trying to get on with other things.

he takes a good hour to get the kids ready to leave the house, it takes me 10 minutes.

For example, he has to:

1. change their nappies (fair enough)
2. go through all their clothes (I just put the first one on)
3. wash the dishes (no reason to do that now)
4. pack the nappy bag
5. go through all their clothes again
6. repack the nappy bag with a different outfit
7. look for a glove that's been missing for 4 months and is too small
8. pack a second nappy bag 'for emergencies'
9. brush their hair (curly-haired children so takes ages to do properly yet looks no different)
10. faff with coats, hats, shoes
11. check every socket in the house is switched off
12. feed the cats
13. have a shit
14. decide to change one child whole outfit
15. realise he suddenly has to call the gas company right this second etc... and that's just to pop to Asda or the local soft play which is about a 5-minute drive.

I just change the nappy if it needs doing, throw on any clean clothes + coat and shoes, pick up the nappy bag and go it's not that hard.