'AITA for letting my wife suffer on her birthday because I'm tired of her chronic lateness?'
AITA for letting my chronically late wife miss an event she was looking forward to by not rushing her?
throwrabbday says:
My wife (32F) and I (31M) have been together for five years. I’m fed up with my wife’s chronic lateness to many things. It’s really annoying and grates on my nerves.
To her, it seems like no big deal because I always manage to rush her by telling her the time of an event 45 minutes earlier. She’s never noticed because she’s too caught up with herself, constantly taking photos. That’s the reason she’s always late.
She has a decent following on Instagram and is looking to grow as a “content creator.” I find it really silly how she turns everything we do into a photo session, and at this point, I’ve stopped agreeing to take her photos altogether.
We’ve had several conversations about this. I’ve told her that it’s mentally exhausting for me to always have to stay on top of making sure we both get ready according to plan. But she never really does anything to address it.
This time, I wanted her to experience the consequences of her actions. This month alone, we’ve been embarrassingly late to events twice, and this time was the first she realized I hadn’t been honest about the timing because I used to give her an ETA 40 minutes earlier. A week ago, I told her I wouldn’t be doing that anymore and that I expected her to act like an adult and be more responsible.
It was her birthday this weekend, and I got her tickets to an event featuring several performers, including her favorite artists in the first act. This time, as I’d already told her before, I didn’t give her the extra 40-minute buffer. I expected her to remember our conversation and store that information in her head to plan accordingly.
Instead, she did her whole influencer routine—decorating our room, setting up studio lights, dressing up, and taking photos. The whole time, I knew she was missing out on her favorite artist because she didn’t take me seriously. It was so ironic that I didn’t even feel like reminding her. I’m done with the mental burden of always rushing and planning.
We arrived, and she realized what had happened. She got upset and started crying, asking how I could do this to her on her birthday. She said it seemed like I was enjoying the rise it got out of her and asked why I couldn’t set my “ego” aside for one day. I told her this was on her; I’d already made it clear I wasn’t going to rush anymore, and she should have listened the first time and expected me to follow through, unlike her.
She said the whole point of the event was to see the performances of those artists, who we’d just missed. She was incredibly upset and kept crying off and on during the event. The ride home was awkward. I was in the downstairs restroom when she texted me, saying I wasn’t welcome in the bedroom that night.
I ignored her message and went in while she was changing. She looked like she wanted to kill me, and I simply told her that her saying I’m not welcome was irrelevant because it’s my room too. If she’s uncomfortable, she could take the couch. She ended up leaving to visit her mom, and now I’m wondering whether I was an a$&#ole.
Here are the top comments from readers of the post:
Alternative-Bat-2462 says:
NTA but how did it get as far as 5 years married? I wouldn’t go past the 3rd date for someone who didn’t value my time as well as anyone else’s.
upset_pachyderm says::
NTA. This would infuriate me, and I wouldn't have put up with it as long as you did. She's an adult; she can figure it out if it's important to her.
Wordly_Act5867 says:
The irony of her mentioning YOUR ego!
CaptainFresh27 says:
My wife has adhd and struggles so hard with punctuality. I on the other hand, have childhood trauma and one of my learned behaviors was intense punctuality and get panicky when I'm late to things. So thats a whole thing.