Me - If you don’t want pasta for dinner again, you need to give me an idea when you’ll be home.
Him - leaving in 10 minutes
Me - Ok, so you’ll be home at 9pm?
Him - yes.
Me (making the pancakes, texts him) - How long?
Him - 10 minutes.
Me (keeps cooking pancakes, waits 8 minutes then starts cooking eggs).
Me (table set, food on table, everything ready to go. 15 minutes since he said 10 minutes).
Me (sitting at the computer, typing this out and feeling annoyed. Hears the garage door open. 35 minutes since he said 10 minutes).
Me (annoyed knowing there is nothing, short of a major accident that could make him this late if he was really 10 minutes away)
Why can’t men just answer an honest question with an honest answer? If you know your dinner is being prepared to be ready when you get home, tell the friggen truth if you’re still in Auburn and not, as your time suggests, getting off the friggen Pike.
Grr.
Oh well, I wasn’t going to eat the nasty eggs anyway. He can suffer.
I have this problem with my boyfriend all the time. He ALWAYS says he’s going to be somewhere by this time, and is always late by varying degrees. The only time it really bugs me is when he comes home at night. I honestly don’t care whether he’s going to be home at 12 or 5am, but if he says he’s coming home at 12 and doesn’t show up until 5am it annoys me greatly - mostly because I can’t sleep well when I’m expecting someone to come in at a certain time, but also because I do worry a bit that something might have happened. He’s gotten better about it though.
So, he walked in the door all happy and chipper and said hi. I looked back at him with not a glare but “the look”. He laughed and said, “I know, I’m bad at times”. I asked just where he was when he said 10 minutes and he said getting on the Pike, which he assumed was 15 minutes away.
He has been doing this exact drive for 4 months now. You’d think that he’d know it takes 45 minutes. Dumbass.
No, I’m not mad. I’m amused.
It’s hard to be mad because you’d think that after all this time, I’d know better than to trust him.
I’m so with you on this. Don’t call me at 4 and say “well looks like I’ll be able to get out of here pretty soon” and then not leave the office until 6:30. 2.5 hours isn’t soon in anyone’s universe.
I don’t care when he gets home - I just want him to manage my expectations!
My wife is awful about this. When I ask her when she’ll be home, she’ll time when her last client is; this really doesn’t tell me much about when dinner should be ready, sadly. If it was based on commute time, I’d understand it, but it usually her finishing up paperwork for a “few minutes” after her last client that makes the difference. If you’re going to spend 90 minutes on paperwork, that’s fine, I understand, I have random late nights too. Just let me frigging know.
Mine is the same. I’ve learned long ago to never believe his time estimates, because they’re always wrong.
And on top of it, there’s miscommunication as well. If I ask “what time to you want to go on a bike ride?” and he says “2 o’clock”, I’ve finally learned that it means that at some point around 2 o’clock he will start getting ready for the bike ride.
If you ask ME that question, it means at some time around 2 o’clock I will be dressed and in the garage wheeling my bike out.
Once I figured that out, it cut down my frustration by a lot.
That said, I would never make dinner and have it waiting for him like the OP. It just would never work. I’d have everything ready except the last few steps and finish those up after he gets home, because there’s no way on earth he could accurately tell me when he was actually going to be ready to eat. Even if he’s in the house, if I say “what time do you want to eat?” and he says “6:30” (or whatever), chances are we won’t be eating before 7:00. He’s just like that. But he’s cute and I love him so it’s OK.
This reminds me of the long and contentious thread here in which a number of people who said they had ADD also claimed that they were entirely unable to keep track of time properly and it wasn’t their fault. :smack:
Truly. I’m male and I’m usually very punctual. In fact I’m usually early to most things.
I think some people just don’t have a concept of time.
I used to hang out with a group of maybe 6 or 7 people of both sexes. We would usually gather at my place. If we said 7:00, I made sure to be there by 6:30. Everyone else would roll in at 7:45, 8:22, 9:50, whenever. No one was on time, ever. So anyway this one time we decided to have a BBQ during the day. 3:00. At around noon I decided I had time to go sailing. I got back at maybe 3:10. Everyone was waiting for me. They had been waiting for like 20 minutes. And they were all pissed at me. “Dude, you ALWAYS do this to us!”
This is the kind of “lovable uselessness” that would soon cause me to stop cooking for anyone but myself! It’s just a waste of time, and of the food you made if it gets ruined. My partner texts me every day on the way home to say “20 minutes”, and it’s usually within 5 minutes either way that I hear the key in the door (depending on traffic). However I still don’t get the food all the way ready - as Athena said, I leave any time-sensitive parts until we’re both ready to eat. And the same the other way, if I’m out later (though I seldom am). Apart from anything else, I’m not ready to eat as soon as I come in: I want to pee, change out of my work clothes, wash my hands, look at the mail, maybe have some smooches…
If I want to be heading out the door by 9:15, I tell Mr. Neville we want to leave by 9:00. If I want to eat dinner at 8:00, I tell him 7:15. Stuff gets done when I want it to get done, with no nagging. That’s a win in my book, even if I do have to do a little math.
We also don’t generally eat right away when somebody gets home. If we have to do that one night, whoever’s home earlier plans to make something that won’t be ruined by sitting on a burner on low (or in a low oven) for a while.
My ex was always late - and would be mad at me if I was ready to leave on time.
The only time I get stressed about time these days is when I’m hosting an event - then I want to be done early. But I’ve given up on having everything ready when someone arrives.
Even if my SO texts to say “OMW” - I will plan that dinner will be ready about 10-15 minutes after they should arrive so they have time to wash their hands, etc.
I will apologize for him. I have no idea how long my morning drive takes me, and I’ve done it every day for 9 months now.
Know what I’d love? For someone to call me as I leave the office, and stay on the phone with me the entire time as I drive home, and just tell me how long it took. Yeah - clocks are very efficient - but who trusts 'em?!? (Seriously - whenever I make a mental note to do this, I NEVER remember to check the clock when I get out of the car. Ever.)
This is where I luck out - my husband is a helicopter pilot and out of habit knows down to the minute how long every trip should last. If he calls and says he’s 15 minutes away, barring an accident, he will be there in 14-17 minutes.
Of course, if I’m making dinner while he’s on the computer, that’s another animal completely.
We are both horribly punctual people who in the past have dated the time-challenged, so as a rule neither keeps the other waiting without a damn good reason.
As for eating as soon as he gets home, I don’t care when he eats. He seems to want to eat sooner because eating later means he’s eating after 11pm. So, I can wait until he gets home or I can try to time it with his arrival at home. I’ve tried it both ways recently, in the hopes that he’ll pick a preference.
My husband and I are lucky to both be on the same page time-wise, but I have a sister who is like this. I had my eyes opened and I understand her much better since we had an occasion to both start at the same place and go to the same place, but in two different cars. I said it would take about 25 minutes to get there; she disagreed, and thought about 10. I was dead on, and I understand her punctuality issues better now - she truly doesn’t know how long things take. It’s made it a lot better for me because I know where she’s coming from; she’s not trying to be a pain in the ass, she simply doesn’t do time estimating as well as I do (not to brag or anything, but I’m good at it).