"I just wish you'd asked me first." Irrational?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m keeping this very general for now. I don’t mind divulging the specific situation later in the thread, but the situation is geeky, gaming-related, and highly mundane. I’d like to get opinions/perspectives from a broader POV first.

So, I’m mildly irritated. My boyfriend made a decision today to volunteer my time for something without asking me first. I’m not entirely sure that it’s rational for me to be irritated, though. It’s something that, had I been asked whether I’d do it, I definitely would have said yes. The only reason I’m irritated is because I wish he’d have asked me first instead of assuming I would say yes. Is this rational? Is this something I should bring up, or should I just let it go? Have you ever been in a similar situation?

I welcome any general advice or anecdotes that spring to mind. Thanks =)

2

I’d go along with it this time, assuming you would have said yes if asked, but I’d definitely have a talk with the boyfriend about respecting your control over your own time.

3

You definitely should be upset.

4

Put me down for “mildly annoyed”.

I get that you’d have done it if asked directly - but your boyfriend doesn’t know if you had any last minute plans / work issues / family dramas that would have made it inconvenient. It would have been better if he’d said; “I *think *she’ll be happy to do this thing, I’ll ask her to confirm it with you.” or some casual variation of that.

5

It depends a bit on the history.

For instance, if your boyfriend has been asked “Can Rachellelogram do X this weekend?” 10 times in the past, and all 10 times he has asked you and you’ve said yes, and he knows you’re free this weekend, I can easily see him short-cutting and saying “Sure”.

If it’s something he knows you would enjoy doing and he knows you’re free, I can see the same.

If he just knows you’re free, then I would be peeved too and would tell him to check first.

If he is just assuming you’ll do whatever because he said so, that would not fly at all.

In this day of cell phones, I think it’s fair to ask that he check with you first. If he was really getting overzealous about it, it might be worth declining the activity just to force the issue. But then you have to make sure that whatever you were signed up for isn’t hurting someone else more than it would hurt him.

6

Yes, it’s rational. It’s a very controlling thing to do. Your time is not his to parcel out.

If it were me, I’d call him on it immediately, be very clear that I expect him to do the minimum basic of respecting other people’s boundaries (one of which is “don’t speak for anyone but yourself”), and make it clear that I don’t want him to do it again.

It was probably thoughtless this time, but it can grow into a huge problem if he continues to do it. What if you’d had plans for that specific day and time? Was he expecting you to cancel them? Was he expecting you to explain to the others why you were “canceling” on them last minute? He’s putting you into a very awkward situation not of your own making, and it’s his mess to clean up.

7

My wife and kids have volunteered me for things before and yes, I wish they had asked me beforehand. If I really hadn’t wanted to do the thing it would be on them to explain why I didn’t show up, so there is that.

Accepting an invitiaion without asking me. Sure, my wife has done that and it is easily undone if I don’t want to go so no problem.

8

Now, let me turn this around. If he had called you up and asked, would there have been any annoyance at all, a “Duh, of course, why waste my time asking?”
I’d like to here more details, as I am somewhat of a gamer geek myself.

9

Mildly irritated is a perfectly appropriate reaction. You might temper it by considering how obvious your answer of “yes” would be expected to be, and how easy/difficult it is to change to “no” if you couldn’t give the time.

If you intend to bring it up, I would suggest framing it as a personal issue for yourself. You personally want to be asked before committing to any event like this, even though other folks may not mind when the request is one that is “obviously yes”.

10

I’d be annoyed as hell. Kaio has it right: he’s just asserted power over you. If you let it go without saying anything, you effectively cede control over some part of your life. Over time, that might get to be a problem since people rarely stop doing this unless confronted.

11

So when you bring it up, and he says “I just wish you’d talked to me first before asking about it on your message board.” what are you going to say?
I don’t think there’s a one-size-fits-all answer here, since it depends on what the person (i.e. you) is comfortable with, and then also can vary with what he signed you up for.

But if you’re annoyed, even mildly, then he went over the fuzzy line, and you should bring it up now. Much better to talk about it when you are OK with doing whatever he signed you up for, than to wait until the next time when you’re not OK with it.

12

So not the same thing. She hasn’t committed him to anything by asking us this question.

I would be annoyed and ask him to check with me first next time. But I wouldn’t get angry about it.

13

I wouldn’t care but only because I wouldn’t care about undouing the other person’s decision if I was umhappy with it.

I meant to add, events like this are a regular feature of married life, “I’ve accepted an imvitation to blah blah,” “You have to take the kids to yack yack.”

14

Your irritation stems from the presumptiousness of his actions. It’s not irrational to feel as if your wishes are being taken for granted. To check in with someone before speaking for them is a sign of respect and thoughtfulness.

“Hey, the next time something like this comes up, can you check with me first? Just in case I don’t feel like agreeing to it, you know? No big deal this time, of course.”

15

First off, I agree that this is one of those “should always ask” type of things, even if the answer is always yes. How hard is it to tell someone “Rachel has always been totally cool with x before, but I’ll check with her to confirm, and get back to you.” ? Not that hard.

On the other hand, there are *categories *of things that close friends or couples do start deciding for each other - for a personal example, I handle setting my husband’s doctor and dentist visits for him, because I keep the calendar of when family/work/social obligations are, and he doesn’t have a clue. Now, we decided this TOGETHER, before I started doing it, and he is ok with that. If it were something else (say a concert or a visit to out of town friends) instead of an appointment, then I’d still ask him if he was ok with it before I scheduled it, because there are other considerations to take into account besides “are we free at that time” and I might not know what they are.

If this is the first time your guy has done this, I’d ask him nicely to please always ask you in the future because you get stabby when people decide things for you. If he continues to forget, either he’s a control freak, likes pissing you off, or is really absent-minded. Then you get to decide how pissy this makes you in the long run.

Also, I too am hugely curious about the gamer/geeky details. Share?

16

My husband and I had a fight once bc he added home-maintenance duties to my to-do list without first asking me if I’d do some runaround. As it so happemed, i was having eye problems and wasn’t planning on driving that day. If he had asked me, I would have just said so, but just putting it on my list and assuming it would be done pissed me off. He and I both know I will happily run errands, but don’t take my time for granted! Now, he always asks me nicely before adding things to my plate.

Tldr; tell him nicely to ask you before volunteering your time.

17

My humble opinion: In general, this is a definite no-no, and you’re right to be upset. However, if he was pretty sure you’d be willing and able to do the thing, it would have been acceptable for him to say precisely that, thereby conditionally volunteering you for the thing, as long as you had the option to back out with no loss of face.

18

Thanks for the advice. For what it’s worth, here’s the situation. If your answer changes based on the facts here, by all means let me know:

We’ve been doing 2v2 arena games in WoW for about a month now. We’re not doing badly, we have a fairly strong comp (plate healer/plate dps) and win more than we lose. We’ve only ever done the bare minimum of games to cap our conquest points every week, though. I’m the healer, and this is an alt character I haven’t played seriously in a couple years (and I’ve never PVPd with this class at all).

Now, out of nowhere, he told me today that he had talked his rogue friend into doing 3v3 arenas with us next week. I was surprised, because we’ve never discussed doing 3v3s with anybody. And, while I don’t mind PVP, I don’t spend much time on it at all. And I don’t think I’m going to be very good at 3s (because I have shit gear, shit skill, and the more people you add to a team, the more clusterfucky it becomes). The only reason I’m really doing arenas on this character is because he’s my boyfriend and I know he won’t judge me harshly when I fuck up. The only mention I’ve *ever *made of doing arenas with more than 2 people (a couple weeks back, maybe?) is that I really, really suck at focusing on that many targets at once.

But still, if he’d asked me if I wanted to do 3s with him and his friend, I would have said yes–provided that his friend was made aware of my relative lack of PVP skill because it’s my alt (I’m trying to play a paladin but I have priest instincts). So, because I would have said yes anyway, I kinda didn’t see the point of rocking the boat. Also, we’re probably going to do 3v3 in lieu of 2v2, so it’s not like I’m *necessarily *going to spend “more” time doing arenas than I’ve been spending on them already. We might even get them done faster, if we turn out to be good. But more likely I’m going to suck hardcore and maybe not have a good time.

Anyway, long story short: I’m really cranky today for unrelated reasons, and wanted to make sure I wasn’t blowing this out of proportion. But in the past, I’ve been guilty of trying to be the “cool” girlfriend all the time, and thus choosing not to bring up stuff that bothers me. I wasn’t sure if this was a cross worth dying on. And I absolutely would not have been “duh, yes” if he’d asked me about this. I’d have considered it for a while, and wanted to make sure his friend was ok in the (likely) event of my failure to be pro.

19

Erm, well with a lead like that…
I see you’ve updated the ‘situation’ and it relates to Warcraft.
Honey, your boyfriend ‘volunteering’ you for ‘something’ is the least of your problems.

This part made me laugh though :

Best girlfriend ever?

Or she and the rest of you could grow a pair and stop being so generation-me-boohoo about it.
Why does everyone assume that their moods are the results of someone elses actions?
Are you being irrational? Or did he really do something THAT bad?

Come on figure it out, because if something so “mundane” as a video game gets you bent out of shape, think about what that means.

20

Is this symptomatic of power struggles within your relationship?
If it were me and someone volunteered me without asking me first, I’d go it if I felt like it and wouldn’t go if I didn’t feel like it. If I didn’t feel like it and the person who volunteered me said “But I said you would.” I’d point out that that’s a risk of volunteering someone without asking them first.