Husband always late, can't take much more

[Dazedandfrazzled]

My husband is ALWAYS late. He's always been like this, but I'm sure it's getting worse, we now have a 2yo and quite frankly I am sick of it. I've talked to him about it over and over, he says he will change, but seems incapable. It's causing a huge strain on our relationship, not one week has gone by that he has managed to be 'on time'. Its actually starting to make me hate him and want to leave because every morning starts off with me feeling this huge stress and disappointment over it, which then impacts my whole mood and day. I'm in a negative rut and can't seem to get out of it. There are other things going on as well so far from a perfect relationship, but this is the core issue which then impacts everything else. I basically spend hours waiting for him (which then by default means I will be doing housework and looking after LO while he faffs around adding to the frustration).

I'm not even sure what I am asking, it seems like a stupid reason to break up a family but I truly feel that I can't take much more. WWYD?

He is taking the piss here.

This.

He knows what he is doing.

You are cottoning on that his tardiness is not completly innocent.

Agree with PP that sloth like making of 1 coffee in such a length of time doesn't sit with my experience of ADHD.

Both my DSes have it. 1 has serious anxiety and is very routine based so will get up and ready on time (1hr), although we have had to give him a series of alarms to move him from 1 task to another and a checklist to make sure he hasn't forgotten anything. He is never late though.

The other is your typical easily distracted adhder. He will walk past something and just stop to play with it/stroke the cat/kick a ball/whatever and when you tell him to get a move on he goes off in the opposite direction to the one needed and does something else that is totally unnecessary. However when he has faffed a lot and only has say 20 minutes to get ready he can really speed up and again, never late. He is only 9 but has worked out its best to get up and straight in the shower then get dressed so even if he then faffs he's mostly ready to go.

They also hate being late so have happily embraced my policy of always aiming to be early and having a buffer.

There is a real possibility, in my mind at least, that he has adhd. My husband and I both have adhd. Lateness is frequent for us though not hours and hours late. For my dh prioritising is almost impossible.
on the other hand, an curious why you dont want him home at all? you say you drop LO then come back hoping he is out and a 45 mins delay (hr gets to work around 10/10:30) in him getting out seems to send you i to a spin. Why do you think this is the case? Do you want a separation or divorce (that would sort your need of not wanting to see him. Or do you both need some mental health support (diagnosis then support).
am so sorry you are struggling with so much

I hate being late for things and I hate people who are late when meeting me. It shows no respect and that they think I've nothing better to do than wait around for them. It's rude!

A friend's foster son is always late for everything. He's ridiculously late ALL the time. A lot of it is a cultural thing.

He's missed a plane, trains, appointments etc. He makes her late to everything too and she struggles with it.

My friend spoke to her foster son's therapist about this. The therapist said that she just needs to let him be late and he will only learn once he loses a job or there is a serious consequence for his lateness.

My friend still finds this difficult but she's trying to do what was recommended. She tells him that if he's not ready by a certain time she's going out without him etc.

Obviously she can't do this is they are going away travelling.

Try to tell your DH what time you're leaving and if he's not ready then go without him.

If you're meeting him at a certain time and he's not there then leave!

All the time you wait around and enable his lateness then he won't get any better!

To me there are two separate 'time' issues.

If DH really does have flexible work hours then it seems to me he can set his own 'departure time' as long as he gets to work on time. Just because OP wants the house empty at 9.30 doesn't give her the right to dictate that he has to be gone. I worked flexi-time and there were 2 days a week that DH, who worked 4 10s, was off that were workdays for me. If DH had told me that I had to be out of the house by a certain time on his days off, I'd have told him to get stuffed. Yes, the faffing about is ridiculous, but again, as long as he gets to work on time so what? Now, if his faffing prevents him from helping OP out in the morning with the DC, that's a different situation.

As far as the being chronically late to events, flights, etc I totally get OPs' fury. If I were OP and this was the 'only' issue in the marriage I'd start leaving him behind, sitting down to eat without him, or doing whatever we were doing when it was supposed to be done. That usually shapes the procrastinator up. But as far as I'm concerned chronic lateness is disrespectful to everyone involved and indicates that the individual feels he's just a wee bit more important than the people he's inconveniencing.

But it sounds to me as if his chronic lateness isn't the only problem in the marriage.

I feel your pain OP.

What’s the opposite of a faffer/timewaster? Whatever it’s called, that is me - I am the exact opposite of your DH. I not only have to be early for everything, I get stressed if in the course of getting ready I’ve not been as ruthlessly efficient as I could have been.

It means I get loads done but also get very annoyed with faffing, daydreaming, dawdling etc. And my DP is a bit of a dawdler. Not to the same extent as yours, but will take his sweet time with tasks that would take me a few minutes to complete.

To avoid being in a perpetual rage, here’s what I do:

• Remind myself that he is allowed to use his time how he wants to, as we all are. If I want to get showered, dressed, have breakfast, tidy the house and solve world hunger all before he has decided whether to have coffee or tea, that’s up to me.
• However, don’t accept the ‘I didn’t have time to do it’ line with shared responsibilities. If you’ve agreed a task is his or something you need to share, hold him to it even if it means he has to do things in a rush or at awkward times.
• When you are travelling or have to attend an event, he is not in charge of logistics - agree in advance that he will work to your timings because of his timekeeping issues and you expect him to follow instructions. This works well for DP and I - he doesn’t have to risk being late/holding us up and it satisfies my need to be early/psychopathically organised 😂

He seems to have opted out of family life with his lateness. Would he be prepared to drop dc off at nursery before going on to work? That way he gets some time with the baby and it gets him out the house earlier which means he's home earlier to either help with bedtime or cooking dinner. If not then I think you will have your answer.

• Remind myself that he is allowed to use his time how he wants to, as we all are. If I want to get showered, dressed, have breakfast, tidy the house and solve world hunger all before he has decided whether to have coffee or tea, that’s up to me.

@MarryingMrDarcy - where does the toddler fit in with that? Why should OP be the only one that has to ensure the child is fed and clean while he decides how to fill his time? He's a father and needs to act like one.

@AcrossthePond55 Alot has happened to get me to this point. Being a SAHM and what comes with that 24/7, and my husband WFH since covid and never leaving the house except for a fortnightly online grocery pick up. I felt suffocated and claustrophobic and basically burnt out at the 2 year mark. I've now put LO in nursery for three half days, soon to increase to four and he agreed to go back to the office four days a week and leave by 9.30 so I could space to myself to try and get back to my normal self. So yes on the face of it, it probably seems unreasonable to ask him to leave by a certain time but that's how it has got to this point. I just want a few hours to think and breathe.

How about making your husband responsible for making the LO's breakfast and packed lunch every second day and giving him a couple of the essential every day tasks like hanging out washing and emptying the dishwasher etc.
He seems to think all time is his time but if your husband had more to do he might manage his time better.

Always give him a time to be ready. Then tell him you are going to the car and that you will leave in five minutes.
Leave after ten minutes - every time - do not wait for him.

Employing the use of timers on the stove can help.
Say you need to have LO lunch packed by XXX and tell him the alarm will go off for him to turn off once he has made the lunch. Never click the alarm off but let him listen to it and turn it off.
His parents must have been annoyed. Is there a course for teaching respect to loved ones? He is so selfish.

The suggestion that he drops the LO off to childcare on his way to work is a very good one.

God help him. You’re saying he’s literally getting up early in order to try and do what you’re demanding and still fails to get out of his own house before you come home and attack him? And instead of recognising that he has a executive function problem, and helping, like a decent human being, you’re sitting at home while he supports you financially, stewing on Mumsnet about whether YOU should leave HIM? 😂 Anyway, my penny’s worth is that you have a husband and father of the child you made, prepared to support you and try to do what you want. I’d suggest to stop deflecting your frustration with being at home onto a decent bloke and start asking of yourself what you can do to fix the situation, like get him assessed for ADHD - and learn what he needs from you that could help and teach. Because all I’m hearing is self-regard and solution free frustration. You had a child with this man. I’d practice managing his time-blindness on him before your child starts to exhibit the same behaviours and grows up in a broken or dysfunctional home crippled with shame and self-hate. Try reading up on key words you don’t know much about from this. Good luck.

Read the paragraph underneath about shared responsibilities.

That’s a shocking thing to say: ‘there’s no hope’. You seem to be eagerly grasping at straws to prove that you’re the victim in this, and that you are being ‘forced’ to leave because of some unreasonable behaviour on his part. You aren’t the victim at all, you seem to be the aggressor. Face up to whatever problem is underlying this, whether frustration with being at home, inability to adjust to being a SAHM or attraction to other men, but don’t use some dramatic hyperbole to justify your lack of commitment. Your daughter will be carefully reading, absorbing and internalising all of your actions, so be the adult yourself and get some help and support from somewhere that isn’t Mumsnet. You may or may not be incompatible. But it’s nothing to do with him being late.

You sound unhinged tbh? It's house too, who are you to say what time he has to leave his own house?

Sort your own mental health out, you hate your husband either way, if you want to be on your own, leave.

You knew the kind of person he was when you married him, you just sound very controlling. Now imagine if it was the other way round......

@Numberfish he doesn't support me financially, I've worked hard to get where I am to enable me to do this for a few years

So it's OP's job to sort out her poor H who has executive function problems?

So do I have, but it didn't stop me divorcing the lazy entitled bloke I married. I learned strategies to help me. Mine wouldn't get up for hours at the weekend, either didn't work, or worked from home, or on the occasional weekend, earning peanuts. I was never alone in the house, which felt very claustrophobic. The house he didn't clean.

As I say, I divorced him.

@AngelAurora yes I do feel unhinged and I'm trying to sort myself out, as I said my mental health is in the toilet for a number of reasons that have got me this point. Up until a couple of years ago I was a resilient, fully functioning person and now I feel unhinged in your words. I would actually like to get myself back to how I was and that's why I've come here to get some opinions and perspectives from other people as it's easy to get stuck in your own head

We're three pages in and OP has yet to acknowledge the ADHD possibility (likelihood I would say).

I may have it myself as being last minute is something I've always done.

If he does have something like ADHD it's up to him to address this and get help first. I'm not surprised you're stressed out because you're basically single with a lodger at the moment so have some compassion for yourself. In order to help yourself out, get a nanny in to pick up his slack. At the same time, you can say it's a temporary measure to help you cope and that you're hoping he'll get some help with his time management problem. It's not up to you to sort him out as though you're his mother. He's an adult. Wait for him to act like one, and in the meantime take care of you.

I am pretty much certain that a combination of ADHD-type symptoms (which meant I had many ideas at work, and found it hard to implement them, or to switch on at 9am), and my Ex, caused the continuous depression I experienced for much of my life, FWIW.

Now I am divorced and retired, my MH is fine

Maybe he does have ADHD. He can make appointments or be on time for things when he wants to, is that how it works? He used to have a job where he commuted on a flight weekly, he didn't miss that plane. I suspect if he didn't have flexible working hours he'd also manage to be 'on time'. I also don't think he used to be like this or this bad, if he had consistently taken 3 hours to get ready all the time I would never have married him or had a child with him. I would have run a mile! Although now I wonder maybe he was like this and I just didn't realise.

An executive function issue seems likely...again, not to self diagnose but I sense that in myself. Procrastinate is my middle name.

He's getting up earlier to try and leave earlier, that right OP? If so, he's making the effort, but he's being held back by what is going on inside his head.

Tbh though it doesn't sound like you are really interested in what might be wrong with him, you are giving the impression you are looking beyond him.

In case you missed my last post, which Cross posted with yours while I was editing, @Dazedandfrazzled