Well, sorry, but when you’re worried sick about someone and it isn’t the first time they’ve pulled something like that a fair bit of yelling is warranted for no other reason than to try to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
If being cool and understanding about it was effective, I wouldn’t have had to be doing a repeat performance.
Funny, it hasn’t happened again since my little tirade. Go figure.
Congratulations. What other annoying habits have you cured through the miracle of hour-long screech sessions?
I’m just going by what I learned from my mom: worrying doesn’t accomplish anything and it just makes you crazy.
Exactly. Only I learned this because of my mother, who is a worrier of epic proportions, rather than from her. Sure, if someone’s hours late and you haven’t heard from them, there’s definitely a slim chance they’re dead. It happens. But, really, what can you do about it? There’s no point in worrying, because that’s probably not what happened and you’ll get yourself all worked up into a frenzy over nothing. If something did happen to your loved one, you’ll hear about it in due course.
Sorry, I didn’t realize I was dealing with the “I’ll do whatever I want, whenever I want and screw anyone who tries to tell me otherwise” variety.
Honestly, some of you here seem to believe that you should be able to come and go as you please, including staying out all night, without calling and your S.O’s are just supposed to keep their traps shut, for fear of being thought of as “clingy” or “harpies.”
Last time I checked, it wasn’t 1954. Good little wives aren’t expected to thank their lucky stars that you came home at all and not dare to open their mouths about the fact that you’re 5 hours late without a peep from you.
Being angry about someone not calling when they should or said they would is one thing; perfectly understandable. Panicking and calling every 15 minutes or throwing a hissy fit about it is another.
I’d say stop worrying, but it wouldn’t do any good. My wife is a worry-holic. The trait is ingrained in certain people. There seems to be the assumption in the mind that “not home when I expect” is automatically equivilent to “something terrible has happened.”
Why should a SO be expected to constantly reassure you that your irrational assumption hasn’t occured via disruptive cell phone calls in the wee small hours of the morning?
My wife doesn’t trust me enough to not die when I’m out late at night alone without a curfew, and it appears Zsofia and lezlers have similar trust issues.
What are you? Slow? I’m talking about yelling at someone for an hour straight. I’m actually a pretty considerate person, considerate enough to figure they’ll get it after 5 minutes of emotional venting.
Carnalk: An hour of yelling does not equal me yelling for an hour straight. I don’t think I could do that if I tried. Hell, I couldn’t even talk for an hour straight. I meant an hour of yelling back and forth, with varying activities in between (like him going and checking his email, coming down 20 minutes later asking “you still pissed?”). Sorry if I wasn’t being clear.
Garygnu: Oh, come off it. Worrying when someone has not come home hours after they said they would does not equal having trust issues.
Everyone seems to be ignoring the fact that had Zsofia’s boyfriend or my fiancee called ONCE, no other phone calls would’ve been made.
Mr. Lezlers calls me all the time and tells me he’ll be late. That’s totally fine with me, I couldn’t care less. Or, he tells me he won’t be home, he’ll be staying with a friend. That’s fine too! Even being one hour late is fine. Hell, I expect that from him. However, being more than 2 hours late and not calling to let me know is going to be a problem. I feel as if I am being totally reasonable in that opinion.
I could’ve written this thread title. my husband works nights, alone in his shop, I work days. On Fridays, we make a point of having dinner out together, I go home, he comes home on Saturday, usually by noon or so, having run some errands like the bank, post office, grocery store etc. One Saturday, it got to be 2, 3 pm and he stil wasn’t home. Icalled his shop, no answer.
kept checking. He doesn’t have a cell, the shop would have been closed, no other people around. He fixes amps etc, is well, not young (will be60 this year), and I got concerned.
Finally around 6 pm, I drove the 20 miles to his shop to see if his truck was still there, maybe he had collapsed (It happened to my dad once, collapsed while alone in HIS shop, cops spotted him and called 911).
He finally got home around 7,having done more shopping than normal. Now he always calls at least by noon. (usually announces “I’m not dead” (edited to add that note)
doesn’t make me clingy.
I would agree that after contact had been made that repeatedl calls after that point are from being pissed vs. worry though.
Well, ok then, that’s quite different. Though I can’t imagine after five minutes of emotionally describing your panic and then saying “I’m begging you to promise me that you’ll call if you are ever going to be that late again” how any guy wouldn’t get the point. Especially when you don’t have a problem with the actual being late. Yes, it’s a perfectly reasonable opinion.
Well, it was just a guess based on the vibe I got from the OP, but in this case, yeah pretty much. Not simply because she called him again at 3am, but because of how the whole thing went down.
He’s out drinking with his friends at 1am, and is noncommittal when asked when he’ll be home. To me, that means that you may or may not see him until the next day, especially since you don’t live together. It would be one thing if he were doing an activity where not being home in the near future would be highly unusual (e.g. driving home from the late shift at work) – I’d expect a follow-up call and think it reasonable to worry if he doesn’t answer. But there’s no reason to think he’s doing anything other than hanging out with his friends, and calling him again to ask why he isn’t home yet sends the message that he should be. If he’s out having a good time and doesn’t want to get into an argument about why he isn’t home yet, I can see him ducking her calls at that point, and then turning off his phone when it’s obvious she’s going to keep calling.
If he did in fact ignore the calls and then turn his phone off, later claiming that his phone was broken and he forgot how to call her :dubious:, that points to this being a pattern of behavior and not just an isolated incident. Hence, my assessment of clinginess. It’s of course just a guess as I don’t know the players, but that’s how it reads from the outside. If it’s true, the OP may want to consider dialing it back a notch, lest her anxiety about imagined dangers cause real-life problems.
Okay, let’s say one of these people in your life is dead?
They’re dead. They won’t answer anyway. :dubious:
If it makes me an asshole, so be it. Logically, if they really are dead, you’re not going to get a call back from them. Someone will call you.
Yeah but the OP made it sound like she wanted a definite answer as to when her BF would be home. It was so obvious that he didn’t want to come home. He said he’ll be home “soon”. I don’t know about you, but when I give someone the ole “I don’t know, I’ll be home soon” line, I’M BLOWING YOU OFF ON PURPOSE. Basically, Giraffe has it dead on.
It’s really starting to piss me off that there seem to be a lot of posters ready to jump in and label the OP as being clingy and shrewish and of henpecking her boyfriend, but not a damn person is saying anything about Mr. Boyfriend’s inability to communicate his needs and expectations clearly. She talked to him at 1am and he said he’d be over soon. Two hours later, he wasn’t there. I don’t think it’s unreasonable at that point to be concerned that something might have happened. If I am reading correctly and some of you are actually suggesting that her boyfriend at this point started ducking her calls because of the clingy/shrewish/whateverness you’re trying to claim, all I can say is… that’s a big load of emotionally immature bullshit. An adult would have answered his fucking phone and said, “Oh, sorry, hon… we got caught up in the game again, I didn’t mean to worry you.” A child would ignore his phone like he’s been caught out after curfew.
All the big strong man had to do was to be HONEST when this whole thing started at 1am and just say, “We’re still playing, I’m going to be quite late, don’t wait up.”
What I’ve been wanting to add but couldn’t articulate.
Considering how this series of calls went down this ONE time, I’m highly confident that it wasn’t the first time.
It would make perfect sense that he was trying to duck her calls.
You know, women get called out constantly for being indirect in communication and expecting men to read their minds and know what they need and want. I’ve always maintained that such sexual stereotypes are bullshit, and you’re just proving my point because that’s exactly what you’re expecting women to do here… read men’s minds and decipher some sort of unwritten code. Basically, that’s the biggest load of childish codswallop I’ve heard today.
If you want to actually have an adult relationship, it requires ACTING LIKE AN ADULT. It’s not pouting and saying one thing when you really mean another. When you say, “I’ll be home soon” when you have no intention of actually being home soon, you’re just a liar.
Pretty much. If I got the business every time I failed to promptly report my whereabouts, I’d be ducking phone calls, too. Maybe he’s NOT actually doing that, none of us know him well enough to say one way or the other, but it’s absolutely not bullshit to suggest that he might be.
lisacurl, we don’t have enough information. It’s quite possible, based on these events so far, that the OP is clingy and has hounded him before with these types of calls. Hence the vague “I’ll be home soon” line, and subsequently not answering the phone later. I mean, if she wasn’t clingy, he likely would have answered after “a few times” = about 9 I gather from the OP after 01:00, don’t ya think?
I think you’re focusing on the wrong issue. Of course the ideal response from the boyfriend would have been something like “hey, I’m having fun with my friends – how about I just talk to you tomorrow?” during the first phone call, instead of being noncommittal. That would have been a way for him to prevent a situation from occurring. But another way to prevent a situation from occurring is not to constantly check up on your significant other when they’re doing something without you. We don’t know that’s what happened here, but there are signs in the OP that it could be. If it is, I’d advise the OP to dial it back a bit. If the boyfriend were posting here, I’d advise him to communicate more directly.
Addressing the OP doesn’t automatically mean one is siding with the boyfriend. I think you’re viewing the situation very combatively.