DP asking the same question every day. AIBU to ignore him?

[BabyBear101]

I've posted on here before about part one of this issue so some people might recognise it.

Basically, DP used to give me a hard time whenever I got home late from work. I finish at 4pm and live about 15 minutes from work. He used to get the hump and quiz me whenever I was home later than 4.20pm. He has the sort of job when he can down tools bang on finishing time and if a job isn't done then it's "someone else's problem". My job isn't like that. If I don't finish a task then it's still waiting for me the next morning. Plus I like to have a gossip with my colleagues sometimes after work 🤷‍♀️ anyway after months of this, I explained all this to him and he reluctantly agreed to cut it out.

A few months on though I noticed he would text me near the end of my working day saying "are you going to be home sharp today?" I didn't think much of it at the time but then he started sending it earlier and earlier until one day he sent it at 10am! I snapped. He huffed. Stopped for 2 weeks. Now doing it again.

I'm now ignoring him when he texts. I can tell it's annoying him because he sent the same message "will you be home sharp today?" twice in the space of an hour.

AIBU? I'm a grown woman and can plan my work day however I please.

Just adding to the chorus of "controlling arse, dump and run" as per above!

@ADHDkillingme that seems totally different to me. When you are home and exhausted with young babies your partner is the cavalry to give you a break- you depend on their arrival and he owes that time to his family. No one owes an adult partner every moment of their day. I’ve felt like you do and of course it’s normal to ask sometimes when they will be home even past that stage - I check when I have evening meetings or the baby is being really difficult while I’m trying to prep dinner or I wanted to go for a run.
op, I know you think it sounds dramatic but I would not could not be in your relationship. Just the texting about being home would have me tense every day waiting for it and I’d erupt into a fury on receiving it tbh. My replies would be very rude. In the early days they’d have been ‘we talked about this’ and they’d go up from there.
but the whole complete incomprehension- I just couldn’t look at him to be honest. I mean, what part of I cannot just take a walk for an hour do you understand? What part of I’m working and you need to STOP TALKING? what part of I can’t leave on 4? I must have said it several thousand times by now - have you TRIED to understand? Do you think I’m your clone? Am I as tall as you? Do I do everything exactly the same as you? Do you think I secretly work for your company in the exact same job? Do you recognise that a fireman had a different job from a teacher? Do you recognise they won’t work identical hours? Do you think a garbage man can pause the truck on morning rounds, with someone’s bin hanging in mid air, and wander off for a walk and chat? When you’re in a cafe and the waiter is walking towards you with your coffee, can they just dump it in the nearest surface instead and go for a chat? I couldn’t cope with the incomprehension in a partner. When I didn’t have children I’d be home between 7:30 and midnight, I had enough of an issue in the early days wiht dh getting home and relaxing and ready to jump on me as I walked in the door to ask how was your day etc. we had to discuss that he’s had his downtime, I am an introvert and I need to be able to walk in my door without this. I cannot imagine living through your scenario and not thinking this man is completely incompatible with everyone else on the planet.

He sounds like the sort of person who really needs order and a system in their life. Zero flexibility. I know a few colleagues like this but I'm the opposite. Used to happily stay at work until midnight to get the job done not because I was being paid. He also has quite an us-and-them attitude to employment, which I don't. My job is to complete X tasks not just be present from 9-5. I would offer two thoughts: one, there's nothing suspicious going on with him, he just doesn't understand. Two, it will get worse with age. Better to draw a firm line under this behaviour now.

Urgh. Is he very stupid and hard of understanding? No? Then presumably he know that you can't leave at 4pm, because things crop up, and that he has to leave you to take calls etc during Covid. He sounds like a needy, selfish idiot.

Is he on the spectrum?

Not read all the thread, but jeez, that'd drive me bonkers .
YANBU (although YABU for putting up with it, I'd seriously go out for a walk or a glass of wine in a pub after work if DH started doing all that crap on me!

Wtaf? Your father?!? What about your own agency as an autonomous adult?

It does sound controlling. It sounds terribly suffocating. It also sounds like he needs a new job and / or interests.

My DH is similar about finishing bang on time as otherwise work is getting its 'pound of flesh'. My parents used also say to 'walk out' the minute the clock struck 5pm. I always thought it was because my parents were self employed that they had no idea that people 'in jobs' didn't 'walk out' the door on the dot.

DH earns a high salary and seems to come and go as he pleases. I earn peanuts and always seem to be doing more hours than I'm paid to do. He keeps saying that my job is 'transactional' and I should only work the exact time I'm being paid to work. I think there are two reasons - firstly DH has a different work mindset. He sees himself as an asset to the company and values the contribution he makes to the company whereas I am completely dispensable and can be replaced immediately so I am always 'proving' myself to my employers. Secondly DH was far worse than me as he worked every evening after the kids went to bed including weekend. His whole team was made redundant out of the blue and he felt very hard done by when he realised he was .just a number' and he changed his behaviour as his career progressed.

YANBU OP. The texts do sound a bit controlling though I presume he isn't asking because he is planning on cooking and you eating together before he goes to work? It might be just easier to say from now on you will be home half an hour later than when you usually are and see if that stops it?

Seriously, how could he not understand that? How difficult is it to work out the concept that, when people pay you to do a job, they expect you to do the job?

@Smineusername Autistic people are not toddlers, HTH

A lot of people don't understand this.
A friend of mine is self employed in a desk job and worked from home. Her DP is self employed in a service type/sales job. He never understands why she gives herself timed breaks and works to a strict timetable every day. He fully expects her to close her laptop whenever he wants to go out for lunch (which is when he is having a slow sales day). He's the same with holidays. When he wants to go on holiday, he closes his business. She has regular clients so she can't do this. There is no understanding there because he has never been worked for anyone else. He's flexible and easy going and she is a planner.

He sounds like a very boring person.

No friends, no interests or hobbies, no real conversation because he hasn’t done anything of interest and only does the bare minimum that he is paid for

What on earth does he find to talk about when he hasn’t done anything.

No job is for life and I would worry that with the attitude he has towards work he will at some stage find himself unemployed and won’t be eager to get his CV together and be proactive in finding another job because he isn’t being paid for the work.

Can I ask do his parents have a similar attitude

Doesn't have any interests or any means of entertaining himself when alone at home?

In your shoes I'd be tempted to block texts from him during working hours.

I dont think its unreasonable to want a rough idea of when your partner is going to be home. I would vertainly text if i was going o be late. Not controlling , its jsut normal manners and communication

“I am the "breadwinner" and he has already admitted he's intimidated by my job.”
That’s a really unhealthy attitude for him to have. I do wonder if he’s a bit resentful of you having the kind of job you do because it makes him feel less important in your life. Not only do you bring in more money and have more responsibility than he does, you spend more time at work than you need to (in his eyes) - so you’re giving your work attention that he’d like you to be giving him instead. Hence the following you around talking. It’s like “you’ve spent all that unnecessary time at work, now give me some attention!”
So not necessarily controlling, but maybe needy because he resents you not having a job more like his.

But would you grill someone if they were 5 minutes late or they asked at the beginning of the day and expected you to stick to your answer without any flexibility

What about if you fancy not getting back straight away after work and want to go to look around the shops or go for coffee

Texting to say you will be late, would you expect to be asked in detail exactly why you were late.

You have two issues. 1. As multiple PP have said, is he always this controlling? AND 2. What the fuck is going on that he feels he needs to police when you enter your own home? There are tons of men with jobs that finish at X time married to women who DON’T finish at exact times, and somehow they understand it.

So either he’s a controlling arsehole, or he’s so stupid he should drown when it rains. Which is it?

Sometimes just the same message "hi gorgeous" every hour if I don't reply

Fucking hell. That would cause my lady parts to fuse permanently closed.

I was going to post in the chap's favour, pointing out that as he works nights, his time with the OP is limited and he probably just looks forward to spending as much time as he can with her before starting work, but then I read the post about how she couldn't work from home during Covid for the annoyance of the man and changed my mind.

He's bored and lonely and maybe a bit insecure about your job.
Talk to him again. Say he is being needy and suffocating and to back down. It certainly doesn't warrant LTB yet despite the MN pile on that always happens with these threads..

Well, as someone with autism, I am not offended by people suggesting this because this "neediness" is quite familiar to me. It's to do with routine and expectations. Change in routine = anxiety. If you know someone finishes work at a specific time, and it takes them 15 minutes to get home, but then when they don't get home at that time, it causes anxiety. So it is very possible that he is asking if she's going to be late home so he will know not to expect her to be home "on time". In that case, the motive isn't to control or keep tabs on her, it is just him trying to manage his anxiety. And I'm the same about start and finish times 😬I had a job once that started at 9am, but you had to be there by 8:45 to do handover. It made me crazy. I still don't understand why they didn't make 8:45 the start time. I begrudged not getting paid for those 15 mins. If the job starts at 9am then that's the time I should start! Anyway...

But that doesn't make it any less annoying for the OP. Her DP needs to find a better way to cope with uncertainty other than harass her by text every day.

No, it doesn’t warrant LTB - if you believe ‘any man is better than no man’.

But … they’re not married, they don’t have kids, and she’s the main earner. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Why wouldn’t you move on in these circumstances?

There are, literally, billions of men on earth - why settle for such an annoying, clingy, needy, pathetic sub-standard one?

Not saying this applies to you necessarily, but I really do get a vibe that the anti-LTB brigade somehow think they’re morally superior - but all I think is you’re clearly in the camp that thinks any man is better than no man, and that’s not a place I’d ever want to be.

Either he's controlling and expects you to be where he wants you, or he's an anxious person who finds it hard not knowing what's happening or possibly he's bored/lonely. Are you his social life or does he have friends and family he sees independently from you. I'd probably say I don't have time to chat at work and then don't engage except maybe at lunch time.

It may be the case that this guy is anxious bored/lonely.
But that's up to him to sort out.
My OH technically finished work at 5.30- and works a 20 minute drive away. He is rarely home before 7.30.
He usually gets home somewhere between 6 and 8 pm.
But this irregularity is normal- him or I would never text or call- I don't really need to know when he will be home.

I message my husband most days to ask when he's going to be home from work, I wfh and my parents look after our children so it isn't a childcare thing. I just like knowing when he'll be back, I like him! I'm not controlling, it's a no