To be sad that no one would help

[Parpadew]

Emergency last night and I needed someone to drive a forty minute round trip. That's all. Never asked for this or any favour really before. I offered to pay. No one would help. Not my mum, siblings. One friend would have but she's on holiday. Got a taxi in the end but it was sheer luck one turned up as it's not a well covered part of the country.

Feel really alone right now!

Op starts the threat with ‘an emergency’ which is definitely not an emergency.

It’s crappy for sure, but not an emergency.

Then drip feeds that it’s her partner stranded not her. But feels that this should be her families problem.

And then tells us the family didn’t help because they couldn’t be bothered.

Well, due to the earlier exaggeration and lack of clarity, I don’t believe it’s as simple as they couldn’t be bothered. There are likely to be reasons that op doesn’t want to acknowledge, because she is pissed off.

Op is more than welcome to return to fill in the gaps of this story. Time for example is key for me.

Completely with you on this one OP. I, and I think most of my friends & family, would have done this. (Assuming no childcare issues nor booze consumption). You're literally just asking someone for forty minutes of their time.

How awful they're not prepared to do that.

So, nobody from his family or friends was able to give him a lift either, but you’re blaming your sister?!

What time was all this going on? 7pm? 11pm 1am?!

If I’ve got to be up at 6 for work, it would be pretty important to me that I got some sleep rather than getting dressed and driving 40minutes to get a grown man home.

Yeah i wondered what time this was as well.

A poster somewhere up thread said the breakdown was at 5pm ish or something? I think? So it was going on from 5 till the taxi was found at 10pm ish?

OP didn't say she and DP live together. She didn't say what DP means, other than her family like him and she's told him her family had good reasons not to pick him up so as not to upset him.

DP could be a recent boyfriend the family have met once for all we know, as OP hasn't clarified.

The fact he was on a train to get to her and the onus was on OPs family or friends to pick him up suggests he doesn't live with OP.

But as she hasn't clarified much, we don't know.

Indeed. I think @housethatbuiltme is confused. There is a direct road - A1(M) but if you wanted to get to some remote village in N Yorks, a 20 minute drive from the A1, you'd be buggered.

That's awful OP - did they give you any indication as to why they wouldn't help? Sending hugs, understand that you feel rubbish about it :(

Of course people should be helpful to others. Some of us have learned the hard way though, that you need to be careful about this because we've ended up with a history of attracting people who will take full advantage of your generosity. Sometimes it's good to say no. People wanting help also have to have to accept that sometimes people who would normally help them can't, for their own good reasons. Unfortunately there isn't always someone able to help. It doesn't mean they wouldn't want to.

I mean - i'd have trouble turning out between 3 and 7 'cos of doing dinner and DCs clubs ect. Would have been able to go after that and would have.

I think the likely hood was always that as folk got ferried away from the station taxis would have become more available gradually. I don't think i'd have worried my DH would have ended up sleeping at the station ... i feel that's hyperbole.

It's soo soo lonely it makes me cry.

Happened to me one child in an ambulance, two children at home. No-one came to help. Ambulance medics looked on with pity as I tried everyone I could think of. Family and friends said no. Ambulance medic were so kind it's took my husband over an hr to get home.
When my dad had a cancer appointment I asked people again if they could watch the kids for an hour again no. Then one friend who lives 40min away took the day off work and came. She spent the day with us which was nice. My kids are extremely well behaviour the reason people say no is my child is adopted and therefore nothing to do with them. It brakes my heart.
BTW my husband and i always helps everyone so I guess that's why there's no help. I'm the helper!

Yep, he could have been coming home from work; visiting her from another city; returning from a stag night out; been away visiting his kids with another woman; or even visiting his OW leaving his wife and kids behind in another city 😉

So we all just pick an idea and run with it and make judgements about people based on no information at all. And yet, as unproductive as that is, I’m hooked.

True, very true.

SHE doesn’t need to drive normally. This was a one off emergency. Unforeseen and unusual. Normally she never asks for favours. Why should SHE have the expense of a car when SHE (or her partner) doesn’t normally need one? That’s the definition of an emergency to me and it’s shit of her family not to help in a one off situation.

But that is an actual emergency. You were justified in feeling alone and hurt at the lack of support.

Good point, how was the BF going to get home from the station originally?

It wasn't an emergency. It just wasn't. You weren't stranded.
I'd help anyone if I could - that's just who I am - but I would expect them to have tried every taxi company before calling me.
You got a taxi, so the situation resolved itself.
I think it's pretty crap that no-one would help you, but maybe it's symptomatic of wider issues within the family dynamic?
I don't let no-one helping me ever stop me from helping others, otherwise I'd end up a bitter, unhappy shrew.

That's terrible. I'd help out anyone in that situation. That's the sort of thing you should be able to count on family for because that is a real emergency.

I think the level of interest here shows that we all actually agree with the OP in principle - normal decent people would happily pop out for 40 minutes (even in bad weather!) to help out a friend of a friend let alone a family member.

That’s the reason people are trying to make sense of the OP’s vague posts - we are so much of the same opinion as her, that we think there must be something she’s not telling us.

Not least because there’s form in her posts for lack of clarity.

Good point, how was the BF going to get home from the station originally?

I think the train was going to have stopped in the city that OP lives in. But chucked every one off in the countryside. Small station.

He wasn't going to come home from the station in the middle of nowhere where he got dumped.

I've read all of your vague updates and think YABU.
It wasn't an emergency, you don't live rurally and it doesn't take 5hrs to book a taxi in a city, you should have ordered one to pick you up first and take you to the station to get him.

That’s the reason people are trying to make sense of the OP’s vague posts-we are so much of the same opinion as her, that we think there must be something she’s not telling us.

I agree. Most people, with a good relationship with friends and family wouldn’t have too many problems begging for help in an emergency.

I wouldn’t say this is an emergency; nobody is hurt or unwell, but it is an annoying unforeseen situation. The fact that there was nobody in the world that either the OP or her boyfriend knows who was able to help either of them, raises a few questions about their relationships with others, really.

Sometimes it really does - especially if there are cancelled trains and high demand on such services. I live in a city (albeit not a massive one) and sometimes it can be nigh on impossible to get a taxi. And no, there are no Ubers either.

How awful for your dp. I can well imagine the scenario. I remember coming home NY to snow, flatmate couldn't get her car out the drive and the nearest taxis weren't running / answering the phones. Strangers on coach had ordered the one running taxi and I asked if I could jump in with them as I'd been travelling for three says and was in no position to drag my suitcase 15 miles home. Luckily they agreed.

These days I'd post on the local fb group. Have done so, once, and someone drove 15 miles down to me, then drove me 25 miles to an appointment. 25 miles home then 15 to his. I was gobsmacked (just asked if anyone was passing mine for the the first 15 miles, but that's what people here do for each other. I'm gobsmacked your own family wouldn't help out.

<laughs own head off>

If it was an adult, was there a local pub they could go and sit in while they called a taxi?

perhaps it’s an assumption, but I’d hope that people of MN are actually familiar with the concept of Rural.

there is a whole world outside of the M25.

I’d expect even those intrepid types who make it as far as LHR to waft off on holiday, even if only to some sprawling AI resort, would recognise that not everyone lives in built up areas. Even if only on the Microsoft screensaver, you can surely see that there are places that don’t have pubs/taxis/buses on every corner.

where I grew up, taxis came from the nearest town, cost a fortune so never used. Nowadays the closest village does have a couple of firms, but they’re not reliable. Uber? Ha ha ha, don’t make me laugh!

Growing up, we had no supermarket, takeaways or restaurants without any kind of walking distance, no buses.

and this is an hour’s drive/train from London. Still, no just eat, no deliveroo, very limited choice of takeaway deliveries.