DH always walks ahead of me. AIBU to refuse to go on walks with him?

[Biffatcrafts]

I'm really am not sure if I am being unreasonable here or not, so please tell me if I am. And I know this is pretty stupid and small in the scale of things, but it's causing tension between my DH and I.

My DH is taller than me by quite a bit (I'm 5'1" and he is 6') so whenever we go for a walk together even if we start out side by side he always seems to stride ahead of me. It gets to the point where I feel like anyone looking at us would think we weren't actually together so great is the distance between us.

It usually gets to the point where I either have to accept that we are effectively walking separately, or I end up having to half jog in an effort to catch up and then keep a really high half jogging pace to stay beside him.

I'm 64, and whilst I am fit and healthy and capable of keeping this pace up, it's not something I want to be doing when on what is supposed to be a relaxing stroll together. (I should add here it also happens if we are just going for a walk around town window shopping, or going shopping too. In fact on any kind of activity which involves walking.)

His reply when I ask him to slow down is that he is simply walking at his normal pace, and that it happens because his legs are so much longer than mine. I can see his point, but I do feel like a little kid running after a parent sometimes.

It's driving me mad, and now I feel like what is the point of going for walks together if he isn't actually going to walk with me? He is super fit, and I do know that if he is on his own he walks very fast (he records his solo walks on Strava and I can see the distances he walks and the pace he maintains).

I've said I am happy to walk a bit faster, but that he needs to walk a bit slower too, and he has tried, but somehow he always seems to speed up and ends up ahead of me again. It's getting to the stage where I've now refused to go for walks with him because I just can't see the point if we end up walking separately. But he is upset about it and feels I am being unfair (and rejecting him) by not wanting to do this activity together.

So am I ...
YANBU to not want to do these walks with him?
YABU - I should just jog on and try and keep up!

Also, do other DHs out there do this too, and if so what have you done / said to resolve it?

He's not the only one - mine is just the same. He does sometimes try hard, particularly if I've had a go at him about it, but unless I say something he will just stride on without really noticing that I'm falling behind. It's worse when DD is with us, as she is stuck trying to work out who to walk with.

We don't go on walks much, and on our last holiday I had a bad back, so we walked even less and he was very aware that I was struggling, so was pretty good.

My running speed is very slow - I discovered in the summer that DD could walk at my running speed, and I persuaded DH out to keep me company on my last run (him walking). It does make my slow running embarrassingly obvious, but in terms of getting a bit of fresh air together, it worked better than a stroll!

6'3 woman here. I dont think YABU to want to have the same pace, but as a longer strider/faster walker myself, it's just as hard to slow your pace as it is to speed it up. Maybe walking together just isnt the activity for you.

Yeah - that's what I did as well. Sometimes, I would just peel off and go in another direction until he realised and had to come looking for me. It's very rude to just storm off in front, particularly if he says he wants to walk WITH you. Being 10 metres in front is not walking 'with' someone.

I presume you just accept that when your sons have toddlers and young children that your sons when taking them walking somewhere will simply walk off and abandon them, because how can they walk slower? Or are you thinking they will be stellar dads if they stop and wait once they are 100m ahead of their 3yo while walking along beside a busy road or in a crowded shopping centre or all the other very very usual places to walk every day with young children?

Same but in reverse. My husband is taller than me but walks soooo slow, even when we are in a rush to be somewhere. He absolutely can walk faster - he is very fit and runs half marathons- but he just likes to take it at his own sweet pace. We will each be walking with one of our girls and distracted and then realise he is way behind, even our 6 year old thinks he is slow. So some people are naturally just slower or faster walkers, but it is annoying

Can’t really remember any issues when the kids were little, I suppose I made some adjustment but they are both fast walkers now too so 🤷🏻‍♀️. They both had loads of energy & were always running everywhere so I suppose kept up. It doesn’t seem to have had a detrimental effect on them.

When my DH does this, I just pretend I can’t hear him if he speaks. He soon stops and waits. Conversation tends to keep him at my pace 😊

Hand to god, I think I keep coming back to this site because it often reminds me my husband not only loves me, but likes me.

OP, c’mon. YANBU and you know that

I can assure you that I both love and like my husband. Does that I mean I want to dawdle every time I walk? No.

Yes. My husband was the same for bloody decades. Then he hurt his knee and had to walk slowly but I didn't wait for him as in all our years together he'd never slowed down for me whatever the reason I couldn't keep up. He hated it. He always thought galloping off without me was hilarious. It wasn't. It was humiliating and unpleasant. Like you, I couldn't see the point in us going out for a walk together if we weren't together on the walk. I told him many times over the years that I didn't like it but I think he thought I was exaggerating or joking. Then we had a massive fall out over something else and I told him exactly what I thought of that and leaving me behind when out walking. He hasn't done it for a few years now and if he did, I would turn around and walk in the opposite direction. It's really rude and childish imo. For people saying they can't walk more slowly to accommodate slower companions, if it was someone with a mobility problem or a child, or even a dog, would you be unable to walk with them at a slower pace?

And that’s fabulous. And also nothing to do with OP’s situation. Sounded like OP wanted to know what we thought of her DH doing that, and if how it makes her feel is unreasonable - which imo, is not.

It’s these seemingly ‘small’ things that kill relationships

YANBU my husband always gets ahead. Not because of being wildly taller, he just does… then if his family or my family are visiting, I walk with them and he often walks ahead. I think it’s rude and he’s missing conversation. I would think it’s rude if I were them as well. He says the pavement isn’t big enough to walk together. He also does it when it’s the 2 of us. I find it annoying!

It's rude. And I've never met a woman who does this, only men.

I'm short, and I'm a slow walker. I also have friends shorter than me, who walk more slowly than me. When we go for a walk i do not walk ahead.

Can anyone imagine doing this to a friend?
Exactly.

Agreed it’s ’these small things.’

Does it bother you? Yes. That’s all that matters. He needs to try to listen and accommodate.

And I say this as a 5’5” woman married to a 6’2” man who wouldn’t dream of ever being so rude

This is a tricky one as he does appear to consistently have a faster pace than you, so would have to maintain an unnatural speed (just as you would) to match each other.
My Dad had a bad habit of walking 10ft ahead of my Mum but never got any further away, so now she has to start walking first - the difference was literally that she sped up gradually at the start of a walk but he moved at full speed from his first step!

But it’s not tricky. If he wanted to, he would. Literally all there is to it

You’re just being ridiculous now. That is a completely different situation.

YADNBU, OP, it’s taken me nearly 5 years to get my DH to slow down. In the end, I stopped trying to keep up, then just turned and walked home.

I also won’t respond to him if he tries to speak to me while he is ahead of me, citing traffic noise preventing me from hearing him and pointing out that if he were next to me, I might be able to hear…

Either they can help it or they can’t. If they can’t help it, like you say, then it doesn’t matter that it’s a different situation- they can’t help it. If they can help it, then the woman they are walking with just doesn’t matter enough, since I think you’re assuming their child will matter enough.

My husband does it too. We have 2 dogs and he marches on in front with one whilst I lag behind. I have arthritis and try to walk as fast as possible. I pull him up for it, he stops doing it for a minute or so then it happens again. We pass multiple couples on our walks who are side by side which I point out to him. I just think its rude, but also has became a habit.

habits can be rude.

Occasionally of course fast walkers can slow down and in shops etc but when going for an enjoyable walk why should one person's pace dictate the others to the extent that the faster walker can no longer enjoy the walk in the same way as they would. Having a naturally faster paced walk or a naturally slower paced walk is exactly that, its your natural stride. So to adjust it is unnatural but on occasion can be done. It all depends how frequently this woman wants to walk with her husband as her needs dont trump his. Its a compromise.

My dh often walks faster so I catch up and take his hand. It slows him down without him realising.
A few years ago we went for a ramble with another couple. The lads were chatting in front and gradually picked up the pace. This left me with the woman who was striding along, talking at me, not chatting with me. I struggle to walk quite so fast due to health, but can walk all day at my pace. After trying to keep up I decided enough was enough. I enjoy a walk and chat but not being talked at non-stop. I just slowed to my pace and realised the woman was still talking, hadn't noticed I wasn't beside her for at least 5 minutes. My dh did apologise for not realising earlier that I had been left behind!
I now go out with a walking group once a week. I'm actually one of the faster ones and enjoy a conversation whilst walking. We stop regularly, group up again and make sure everyone has a chance to catch their breath before we start off again. We never get so far ahead that we lose sight of each other. The only time we lost anyone was when our local PC joined us for our walk. She was right place, right time to head off into the woods to find someone they had been searching for. Because she found him she couldn't rejoin us. We walked back that way just in case she was trying to catch up, as we didn't know whether she had found the missing person. It was a good decision for her to join our walk that day.

This is why men and women just aren't suited to doing stuff together. It's up there with mooching round department stores. Once you free your mind from thinking you have to do these things together, you will see so many activities differently.