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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My wife has always been very rigid about showing up on time to places when we’re meeting up with other people. In her mind, showing up late shows a lack of respect for someone else’s time. While I agree with her somewhat, I think there’s some nuance to this. I’ve mostly just gone with it during our marriage, but a recent incident has me rethinking my approach.

Last night, we were going over to her parents house for dinner. It wasn’t for any special occasion, just your run of the mill Saturday night dinner. My MIL told my wife to come over at 5:00, which means we’d have to leave our house by 4:45. As we’re getting ready to leave, our three year old daughter was being a handful, nothing over the top, just typica three year old behavior (running around the house while trying to get her shoes on, spilling her water, etc) As we’re both trying to get out daughter situated and in the car, wife looks at the time, notices it’s 445 and says “we’re going to be late! I’ll go there now and you can meet us there!” And just walks out the door and leaves. I continued to get out daughter ready, which took about another 10 minutes, and then left in the other car. We got to in-laws house, and everything was fine.

After we got home, I asked my wife why it was such a big deal to get there on time. She reiterated that her Mom asked us to get there at 5, so they were expecting us, and it’s not respectful of their time to show up late. I countered with the fact that we weren’t tying to be disrespectful, but sometimes thing happen, and we were only going to be 10 minutes late. It’s not like this was a restaurant where they would have given away our reservation, if we showed up 10 minutes late, life would have gone on. However, my wife kept saying how it’s not respectful of their time, etc etc.

We didn’t really come to a conclusion about it, but is my wife being unnecessarily rigid about this? Or am I being too laid back?

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Depends on the families, OP.  DH is is often late for my family, because he and his family are passive aggressive that way.  To further complete the point, if DH and I were late when our kids were little, and [b]we showed up late, DH's family would eat without us[/b], and there (on more than one occasion) was not much/any food left.  This was on a major holiday, so everything but McDonald's would be closed, usually. I don't mind the being late or eating without us part, as I mind the not saving our kids (don't care about us) part of a meal, to include them. In contrast, MIL is always certain to save SIL's entire family more than enough food if they are late (and by their late, I mean over an hour).

We are not usually late for DH's family, except when the kids were little, so yes your IL's and your spouse should be cutting your nuclear family some slack  - and saving everyone, across the board, enough food.  Dh is kind of jealous of the closeness of our family, so being late for my family is his version of sticking it to (whomever, as does his birth family). Assuming your IL's are not so mean/selfish/inconsiderate. [/quote]
Uh... to be fair, if you are late enough to miss a big meal, you are absolutely, completely, disrespectfully way too late. if you have some crazy circumstances then okay, but I would be pissed if I were hosting...[/quote]

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