Punctuality Disagreement

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am generally spouse A. But I'm also flexible enough to see when punctuality isn't a big deal. There are some events, like house parties or happy hours, where you can roll in a bit later and it's fine. Most house parties, for example, don't start right on time.

It wasn't a house party, you M. It was a dinner reservation with work friends of her spouse.

Why can't these friends wait? Are they so specials that they can't wait a couple of minutes?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:threatens, frustration, dithering, furious, embarrass ... language is too strong.
Each spouse can come/go as they like. They should just do it, drama free

I have friends, a couple, who drive to the airport separately. One likes to cut-it-close re:arrival. One gets stressed. So they drive 2 cars. If the late one misses the flight, the other still gets to go. NO DRAMA

Surely you can see that won't work for dinner reservations?

I posted earlier that my husband is often late. He’s a surgeon and sometimes cases go late.
It’s fine for dinner reservations. I just order his food when everyone orders, and he shows up when he shows up.

Sigh. And surely you can see that it is different when someone is unavoidably detained by professional obligations, as opposed to Spouse B, who can't get off his or her butt to be on time, and just doesn't care?

Apparently, your husband is the brains in your relationship. I hope you're good looking, or independently wealthy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Spouse A is right, but if I were Spouse B and you left without me, I wouldn’t uber myself to the restaurant; I would stay home.

Yes, I would stay home and possibly even leave Spouse A. They picked their friends over their spouse.

Wow, I thought it was strange an earlier pp said this B side was narcissistic behavior, not chill. (I fall on the A side.) But, dang, there is A LOT to unpack with your comment….honoring commitment shows he’s not committed to you. You definitely prove pp’s point it its a test or gotcha.

Yes, you don't leave your spouse behind over a meaningless diner with co-workers. You get there late, you apologized and you work out the issue with your spouse. You don't throw you spouse under the bus in front of co-workers.

If this was a one-off occurrence, then I'd wholeheartedly agree. But it isn't. It's a repeated pattern of behavior, where Spouse B has demonstrated, time and time again, that s/he just doesn't care about being on time, courtesy to the dinner companions, or Spouse A's feelings. In that case, Spouse A was more than justified.

Also, what you call "throwing Spouse B under the bus" most people would describe as "natural consequences."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:threatens, frustration, dithering, furious, embarrass ... language is too strong.
Each spouse can come/go as they like. They should just do it, drama free

I have friends, a couple, who drive to the airport separately. One likes to cut-it-close re:arrival. One gets stressed. So they drive 2 cars. If the late one misses the flight, the other still gets to go. NO DRAMA

Surely you can see that won't work for dinner reservations?

I posted earlier that my husband is often late. He’s a surgeon and sometimes cases go late.
It’s fine for dinner reservations. I just order his food when everyone orders, and he shows up when he shows up.

Surely you can see how this is different from OP’s confession that she’s not saving lives, it’s that she just doesn’t like these people who aren’t good friends.

You don’t know what she was doing. All you know is that the military guy thought she was “dithering.”
She could easily be a surgeon getting home late, and her husband doesn’t think she is getting ready fast enough.

Ok, so travel separately. Why the need for the loyalty test of mutual lateness?

Pp you are replying to.
I didn’t read that part of the thread. I found it difficult to follow.
I was agreeing with someone who said that this could have all been done without the threats and drama from spouse A.

Based on your other posts, this is not surprising at all.

[Anonymous]

Spouse A is correct

[Anonymous]

My spouse is like this. For something important like church, we simply drive separately. He will never change and I refuse to be late.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:threatens, frustration, dithering, furious, embarrass ... language is too strong.
Each spouse can come/go as they like. They should just do it, drama free

I have friends, a couple, who drive to the airport separately. One likes to cut-it-close re:arrival. One gets stressed. So they drive 2 cars. If the late one misses the flight, the other still gets to go. NO DRAMA

Surely you can see that won't work for dinner reservations?

I posted earlier that my husband is often late. He’s a surgeon and sometimes cases go late.
It’s fine for dinner reservations. I just order his food when everyone orders, and he shows up when he shows up.

Sigh. And surely you can see that it is different when someone is unavoidably detained by professional obligations, as opposed to Spouse B, who can't get off his or her butt to be on time, and just doesn't care?

Apparently, your husband is the brains in your relationship. I hope you're good looking, or independently wealthy.

Okay. I’m an idiot.
Why is it that it will work to be drama free if your spouse is at work, but you must threaten them at home and embarrass them in front of your dinner companions if your spouse is “on their butt?”

It seems to me that you could be all drama or no drama in either situation. You could choose see the situation as avoidable or unavoidable in any context. You could absolutely be pissed at your surgeon spouse for tacking on a case at the end of the day or scheduling a big case on a day that she knows you have dinner reservations with your work colleagues. She wouldn’t do that if your kid was the lead in a school play that night.
And you could absolutely see your spouse’s lateness as an unavoidable part of their personality given their cultural upbringing and the way they are other areas of their life.

The way I see it, whether you see your spouse’s behavior as “avoidable” or “unavoidable” is all in how you think about it. You can choose to have thoughts that make you angry and lead to threatening your spouse and ruining your evening. Or you can choose to have thoughts that make you more accepting of other people, happier, and more likely to have a pleasant evening and overall happy home.

It is totally possible to just go to dinner, meet your spouse there, and not threaten or embarrass them. The context does not matter.

[Anonymous]

A person is entitled to do what's considered more correct - showing up on time.

The spouse is a separate individual.

[Anonymous]

I don't see the big deal about arriving separately or how arriving late separately is any more embarrassing than arriving late together.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Suppose Spouse A is big on punctuality because they come from a military background and also feel that being on time means respecting other people's time. Spouse A also thinks that punctuality is a good habit to pass on to children. Spouse B is less punctual and feels that being 15-30 minutes late is not that big of a deal. Part of this is attributable to cultural/family background and part of it is a tendency to get distracted.

They have discussed the issue repeatedly and Spouse A frequently threatens to just leave Spouse B and go to events, but has never followed through with it until this weekend. They were supposed to meet another couple for dinner and were already running late. The other couple consists of Spouse A's work colleague and their spouse. They are work friends, but not best friends, and the couples have hung out socially together a few times. Spouse A told Spouse B that if they were not ready in 5 minutes, they could take an Uber to the restaurant. Spouse A actually followed through and left to the restaurant in frustration while Spouse B was still dithering.

Spouse B is furious with Spouse A and feels they were trying to embarrass them. Was Spouse A a too drastic?

I would be LIVID if you were 30 minutes late to a dinner with me and my husband without a seriously good excuse. Spouse B is a jerk.

Really? I would be irritated if I was cooking and I prepared things to be ready at a specific time, but it sounds like they were all meeting up at a restaurant. I would just have a drink with my husband.

It would be so much weirder to be brought into the middle of someone’s marital drama.

Ok, you do you. I think it's incredibly rude to show up 30 minutes late to a dinner reservation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Spouse A should have done this years ago. Being late when you're meeting specific people is SO rude. Being late to a reservation is rude to the restaurant. Being 15 minutes late to a 50 person backyard party? No big deal.

But then you're not really "late" - it's just that it didn't have a hard start time. Those events are usually "12-5" or whatever, so showing up at 12:30 isn't late, it's within the window.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Time and punctuality is very culturally driven. There are places where it is rude to be on time... and many places where punctuality is not at all a culturally held value, time isn't seen the same way at all.

I am definitely more a Spouse B but I would never have married a Spouse A type person so we wouldn't have this issue.

People often refer to cultural norms when discussing promptness. However, it’s only ever in the context of how in some cultures it’s an expectation to arrive late. What about the cultures where it’s considered rude to be late?

It always feels like an excuse for the late people and the on-time people are accused as having anxiety. Why does one cultural norm override another culture’s norm?

I’m not a military person but I was heard that in that cultural you have to be 10-15 minutes early.

DP but I think being 15 minutes early to some events, like a house party, is ruder than being late.

It's not ruder than being late, but it is rude.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Spouse A is right, but if I were Spouse B and you left without me, I wouldn’t uber myself to the restaurant; I would stay home.

Yes, I would stay home and possibly even leave Spouse A. They picked their friends over their spouse.

Wow so you'd not only require your spouse to be late because of you, you'd throw away your marriage over this?

This is the kind of bizarre behavior that makes on-time people think always-late people are controlling narcissists.

Spouse A is the one throwing away the marriage over this. Abandoning your spouse because you want to please a co-worker shows where their priority was. This was just a random diner, nothing critically important enough to justify leaving your spouse behind.

When you agree to meet people at a restaurant at 7:00, you absolutely need to show up at 7:00. Most restaurants will not seat the whole party until everyone is there and the most they will hold the table is 10 minutes. On top of that, why do you think everyone should just stand around for 30 minutes waiting for you? What makes you so important?

[Anonymous]

So many people with main character syndrome and no manners. I would never be friends with or marry someone who is habitually late. Such narcissistic behavior.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Suppose Spouse A is big on punctuality because they come from a military background and also feel that being on time means respecting other people's time. Spouse A also thinks that punctuality is a good habit to pass on to children. Spouse B is less punctual and feels that being 15-30 minutes late is not that big of a deal. Part of this is attributable to cultural/family background and part of it is a tendency to get distracted.

They have discussed the issue repeatedly and Spouse A frequently threatens to just leave Spouse B and go to events, but has never followed through with it until this weekend. They were supposed to meet another couple for dinner and were already running late. The other couple consists of Spouse A's work colleague and their spouse. They are work friends, but not best friends, and the couples have hung out socially together a few times. Spouse A told Spouse B that if they were not ready in 5 minutes, they could take an Uber to the restaurant. Spouse A actually followed through and left to the restaurant in frustration while Spouse B was still dithering.

Spouse B is furious with Spouse A and feels they were trying to embarrass them. Was Spouse A a too drastic?

I would be LIVID if you were 30 minutes late to a dinner with me and my husband without a seriously good excuse. Spouse B is a jerk.

Really? I would be irritated if I was cooking and I prepared things to be ready at a specific time, but it sounds like they were all meeting up at a restaurant. I would just have a drink with my husband.

It would be so much weirder to be brought into the middle of someone’s marital drama.

Ok, you do you. I think it's incredibly rude to show up 30 minutes late to a dinner reservation.

I will! I like hanging out with people who married someone they like to be with, and who don’t need me around to be a buffer with their spouse.

I can see how if you feel that you can’t spend 15 minutes alone with your spouse, it probably doesn’t really phase you if the other couple is in a fight or not speaking to each other.

For me, the late thing wouldn’t bother me, but I would find a fight incredibly awkward.