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.

@PearlclutchersInc I used to get this a lot the day before I went on holiday. I realised that it was a way of getting something off their desk onto mine and buying themselves a time cushion:

Boss: 'Jenkins, have you dealt with XYZ?' Jenkins: 'I have sent it to Gnome but she hasnt come back to me yet' (knowing full well that they sent it at 4.55pm the day before I was setting off on holiday for a fortnight).

Now I set my out-of-office at least half a day before I am going on holiday. They get a ping back and know that XYZ is still firmly on their own desk. If I am feeling particularly evil then I will deal with XYZ and send it straight back possibly copying in their boss (I only do this if they have a history of 'hospital passes'). That way they are forced to deal with the result.

Omg @LondonWolf if I didn't know better I would think you were my mum ! I had this experience growing up but completely blanked it from my memory plus ours was Newark. But now I remember I now know where I get it from and it seriously for me iz just as with @JustUseTheDoorSanta a faffing thing I loose track of time getting ready etc especially if a I don't have s specific time to work to so must wind DH up. But saying that the amount of times he has pestered me about getting out the door send I start to head out then he is like oh hang on I need the loo inevitably for his 60millionth poo of the day

The title of your post gave me anxiety.

There's only one way to handle it, do your own thing and meet back up. For example, I no longer travel to airport with DH. I see him on the plane. Having me pressuring him only makes him.slower. We have missed flights before so now it's everyman for himself.

I love him but I feel your pain.

@Goawayangryman

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

Excellent post @Goawayangryman

I heard a bit on the radio last night while driving home from work that was laughing at life hack people have used and one of them was to marry someone more organised than you so you can have a easy life.

@1ittlegreen

The title of your post gave me anxiety.

There's only one way to handle it, do your own thing and meet back up. For example, I no longer travel to airport with DH. I see him on the plane. Having me pressuring him only makes him.slower. We have missed flights before so now it's everyman for himself.

I love him but I feel your pain.

I'm really curious how this works. Sounds like a good solution! How dos he feel about it? Has it reduced stress for both of you? Have you always made it to the plane?

You know him better than we do and if YOU don't know by now, then WE have no chance of knowing the answer. 😁😂

If you’re ready to go and he’s faffing about, LEAVE WITHOUT HIM.
If you’re ready to go into the security queue and he’s dithering, GO WITHOUT HIM. You get the picture.

He’ll probably get the message that his faffing and dithering about are NO LONGER TOLERATED.
However, if all you do is bitch and moan and complain and get more & more frustrated, he’ll keep being a MAJOR FAFFER and you’ll go insane.

I used to have a boyfriend like this. We would arrange to do something at a certain time and he would then decide something else, not important had to be done at the time he should be leaving and would then make us late. I remember once we were leaving to go somewhere, already a little bit late and he noticed the post had come through the letter box. He stops, picks it up, goes and sits down again to look through the mail and then starts opening the letters and reading them. He said that they might have been important. They weren't. I just started telling him things were half an hour earlier and it worked. But as I said, he is an EX boyfriend for this and many other reasons!

The best response to this is your, "I'm going swimming, Cya!" with judicious forays into, "I'm leaving in 10 minutes with or without you. Your choice," and then sticking to that. He will absolutely hate it, but no more than you have been hating what he's doing.

In my family, we call it "Cudd'n (cousin) Georging." We have a cousin who is routinely late for everything. One evening, everyone was gathered at George's house to go out as a group. George was, as usual, dithering. Finally, his wife exclaimed, "GEORGE! You have poke-assed around here, and poke-assed around there, and now we've missed our damned reservation!" And thus was the expression born.

My DH has adhd and so do I think. So we kind of leave the house at the same time and both well synched thank goodness. My sister on the other hand, just watching her makes my blood boil and she always forgets something.

My FIL is the opposite, a total panic to be late for anything. The type that will camp at the airport the night before in case something happens and he'll miss a flight. It used to piss me off when we did something together or went on holiday but now I just say "bye, you can wait 12 hours at the airport if you want. I'll see you there" and just wave him off. He just stresses everybody out for no reason and I'm not like my sister that would make people miss their flight (my sister has couple of times as she is the Queen of ditherers) but come on, I would be at the airport or event at a reasonable time, not hours before.

I can relate to this post a lot. My partner loves to make a meal out of the tiniest job. He insists on washing things before putting them in the dishwasher, and I don't mean a little rinse to get bits/sauce off etc im talking a full bloody wash! Which begs the question why we bother with the dishwasher.
He walks in slow motion and doesn't have a 'rush' in him. I love him but it is completely infuriating

I was married to one of these. I divorced him. Obviously that wasn't the only reason but it was a huge part of our incompatibility

Oh yes! I have one like that!

I learnt very quickly in the relationship to bullshit about every time we had to be anywhere. He gets cross with me when he realises that I've done it. I usually give him an hour extra and pretend that I got confused about the timings if we do turn up early (which is rare).

I have driven off without him a couple of times. We missed a flight once so I made him pay the extra that it cost to go on to the next flight.

It does make me wonder how on earth he copes at work! Part of the problem is that he will chat the hind legs off a donkey. What I can say in 10 minutes will take him half an hour and he rarely notices that people have switched off.

With him I think some of it is about control and some of it is about being Neurodiverse. He will tell the kids off and moan that we're running late and yet we're ALWAYS in the car before him. It's become a family joke "Dad's faffing again!"

One of our children is exactly the same and if I didn't physically fetch their clothes and dress them (secondary school age) they would never get out of the door.

Once we timed how long it would take for the child to get themselves dressed with periodic prompting. It took 6 hours! It takes 3 hours of work to get them in the shower. The child is autistic and we suspect innattentive ADHD.

Grrr I am at London Heathrow as we speak. Just flown back from a hot country and DH decided to travel in summer clothes back to blighty.

We have just queued as passport control for ages and now I'm sitting by the baggage carousels whilst he faffs with his open suitcase to change into 4 degree clothes. When we get through customs he will faff with getting coffee, paper, stuff and I'm desperate to get home.

Faffing is so tiring for the person being faffed, its constant waiting around whilst the faffee is oblivious.

@DingDongDenny

My DH is like this. I'll say 'We need to go in 10mins' He'll say 'I'm ready' Then 10 mins later I'm ready to walk through the door an he'll 'just' need to go to the loo, brush his teeth, find his shoes, put the bins out etc

Yes this!! 🤣

@1ittlegreen

Grrr I am at London Heathrow as we speak. Just flown back from a hot country and DH decided to travel in summer clothes back to blighty.

We have just queued as passport control for ages and now I'm sitting by the baggage carousels whilst he faffs with his open suitcase to change into 4 degree clothes. When we get through customs he will faff with getting coffee, paper, stuff and I'm desperate to get home.

Faffing is so tiring for the person being faffed, its constant waiting around whilst the faffee is oblivious.

I really sympathise with this one. Much of DH's comes down to an inability to organise, particularly in his own head (no mental check list) but this one is just personality difference I think - he genuinely doesn't care if we only get home an hour later. While I'm desperate to be in my own house, drink ac up of tea, shower, see my cat etc.

I'm retired and I notice that I now have to specifically plan what time to get up, get ready and leave where i used to give it little thought. I've had friends who were incapable of doing that much, though, unless it suited them. One friend was coming for lunch and I told her 1pm, everyone else 2pm. She was still last to arrive, by half an hour. When I told her I'd given her a time an hour earlier than everyone else, she was angry. It was at that point I realised it was arrogance that motivated her to always be the last to turn up.

My SIL is the queen faffer and my MIL panders to it. She was once invited to a meal at her in-laws that was supposed to sit down at 2pm, she left him at 2:30pm!! MIL will postpone everything til SIL is ready to leave, or eat or whatever but I refuse.

DH has tried to do it in the past, but I've stomped on it. His time is not more important than mine and if he can't be ready when I say we are leaving he doesn't come with us. Simple as that.

If he decides he is going for a poo just before I serve tea up, then I serve tea up for me and the kids and his goes cold in the pot.

Take back the control, stop treating them like children. As a PP said, they are all competent adults who hold down jobs, stop being their mothers.

My ex was like this, and was always making me out to be the one with the problem for rushing.
Got a phone call from him once at 5:30am because he’d missed his flight. How I laughed when I hung up the phone 🤣

One of our children is exactly the same and if I didn't physically fetch their clothes and dress them (secondary school age) they would never get out of the door.

Have you tried lists of things to do - starting of written then verbal over time and count downs?

Did this with DS and over time he got more independent and capable of managing by himself - he still has a younger sibling who will check on him as they walk in together and she will leave without him - so will need to see how he manages at college with buses and times.

However we're in a better position than if I was still doing it all for him which would have been quicker and easier initally.

It did take years to get him there - and still need to remind and check every so often. I do think this is what my DMum was doing for years with me as well -maybe why so found me so difficult.

@teacreature

My DH has adhd and so do I think. So we kind of leave the house at the same time and both well synched thank goodness. My sister on the other hand, just watching her makes my blood boil and she always forgets something.

My FIL is the opposite, a total panic to be late for anything. The type that will camp at the airport the night before in case something happens and he'll miss a flight. It used to piss me off when we did something together or went on holiday but now I just say "bye, you can wait 12 hours at the airport if you want. I'll see you there" and just wave him off. He just stresses everybody out for no reason and I'm not like my sister that would make people miss their flight (my sister has couple of times as she is the Queen of ditherers) but come on, I would be at the airport or event at a reasonable time, not hours before.

Ha! My DM is like your FIL. She'll ask me a week before a holiday if I'm packed yet. When I say 'of course not' she gets huge anxiety and sends me lists of things to pack ('6 pairs of knicks, 2 evening blouses...') She likes to leave home at least 8 hours before a flight 'in case something happens' which is infuriating if you have a 6pm flight home from Europe as frankly we could have had a nice walk/beach time and lunch but we are instead hanging around teeny Spanish island airports with nothing to do except use the lavatory or the broken vending machine for 6 hours. The one time we did convince her it wasn't necessary to go so early and to have lunch, she couldn't eat her prawns as she was too anxious. DH on the other hand declares anything 'too early' if we spend any ANY time waiting.

On a light-hearted note - nobody has put up the links to the Wait But Why posts on procrastination and lateness so I'm going to because they're internet classics.

waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrastinate.html

waitbutwhy.com/2015/07/why-im-always-late.html

Some men could be just slow if their body has become slow. Some men have health conditions like sleep apnoea which makes them not get good sleep and they feel lethargic and tired all day. Then each action may end up very slow. They may have low energy in particular times of day when they feel like sleeping/relaxing. Just another perspective....