'AITA for lying to my girlfriend about the time we're supposed to arrive for an event?'

"AITA for lying to my girlfriend about the time we're supposed to arrive for an event?"

My girlfriend is really bad at being early or on time for things. This usually causes us to be late for things and we both hate being late, but she always repeats the same things that causes us to be late. Here are the factors that lead to us being late:

She has IBS (This is something that is out of her control but contributes to us being late). If she is too tired she will insist on getting an hour of sleep in. She putters around the house watching tv shows on her phone while she tries to do other things.

She insists on breakfast and spends time cooking and eating (she never rushes for this). She spends a long time trying to figure out what clothes she wants to wear (sometimes she will put on clothes; not like how she looks in them, and then goes to find other clothes to put on).

Spends a lot of time putting on makeup. Needing to bring extra things like wipes, water and sometimes extra clothes (if we are going to be out for a long time). I've tried speaking to her about this before and I've told her that she needs to focus on getting ready so we don't end up running late.

Usually one of two things will happen. She will either get mad at me for getting on her about being late (she will tell me that she actually is trying to hurry and I am not noticing) or she will be sad that she knows we are running late and tells me to go without her.

Yesterday we were going to a small event a friend of mine put on. I told my gf we needed to be there for 12pm. As expected, the above mentioned things happened and she kept asking me if I was mad at her because we were running late. I told her it was okay, but we really needed to go. As expected she didn't finish getting ready until 12:16pm.

She apologized for taking so long and asked me how long it would take us to get there and she asked me if my friends would be mad at the both of us. I told her that it was okay because I lied and the event didn't really start at 12pm and it actually started at 1:30pm.

She was livid and she told me that I was such a huge ahole for lying to her and making her rush all that time. I told her that this was good because now we were going to arrive early for something. She told me that this wasn't the point and focused on me lying to her. Now idk if what I did was wrong or not. She spent the whole day speaking to me as little as possible.

Here's what people had to say to OP:

hmtee3 said:

NTA. I have friends like this, and the friend group has just resorted to telling them an earlier time. In all of my experience with this, people are usually relieved when you tell them the real time afterwards and laugh.

But that’s dependent on if they’re self-aware enough to know they have this problem. They know it’s a problem, and they’d know better to get upset about a lie that’s only told to accommodate their chronic lateness.

Hiply said:

NTA - but are you really sure you want a lifetime of this happening? She is who she is, so you need to decide how big a relationship issue it is.

giglbox06 said:

NTA for trying. I did this in the past with an ex. I would lie about start times but only sometimes (if it was a more important event). He eventually caught on. Then he started completely disregarding times I told him bc he didn’t know if I was being honest or lying. It was very frustrating. One time he was two hours late for his own party that was at OUR HOUSE.

VariousLandscape2336 said:

NTA dude. This is her fault and you've tried to correct it before this and she fails to listen to reason.

thechaoticstorm said:

You are NTA. You figured out a way to deal with her constant tardiness. What she is doing is incredibly rude and disrespectful to you and whoever is hosting the event. If she's mad about getting ready earlier, it indicates to me that she likes being late for attention.

You have called out her BS in a brilliant way, and have showed her she CAN be places on time if she starts preparing earlier. She just doesn't WANT to.

Brilliant-Egg3704 said:

NTA my ex was like this and i told him an hour before the event started so we could be on time. I despise being late and I had 3 kids at the time. So she has no excuse just either her own social anxiety or just excuses.

Later, OP edited the post to include more information:

I appreciate everyone's answers. Just to clear some FAQs here: 1) She doesn't know how to drive so if we can't leave together then she likely will just opt not to come. 2) She doesn't have ADHD or ADD. 3) This is a very frequent problem for the both of us. We've been together for 4 years and I can probably count on my hand the number of things we've been early to.