No No with 20/20 hindsight the scenario would play out like this.
“Hi honey, what a bummer your car won’t run, let me try it.” Hubby goes over and tries to start car, which turns over but refuses to start. THEN Hubby goes back to his car and gets the gas can out. If Wifey starts to complain, he says,“Just humor me lovey” and proceeds to put gas in the tank and start the car.
At this point instead of calling his wife a lying bitch. He gives her a hug and they have a nice little discussion about POS Fords and the fact that the gas gauge is wildly inaccurate. Wifey then agrees based on the POS Ford theory to always keep the tank 1/2 full. Hugs and kisses ensue.
BTW whenever I have had to call for a service truck the first thing the guy does is check all the fluids and dump a couple of gallons of gas in the tank. Especially if the car is turning over but still won’t start. Towing is always the last resort. Am I the only one to experience scrupulous service?
My problem with this whole situation is this. She sees there’s 1/8 of a tank left and she’s catching hell for running out of gas.
He gets told there’s 1/8 of a tank left and he’s right not to think she’s run out of gas.
Either it should have been obvious that the tank was empty, no matter what the gauge read, or it’s unfair to yell at one person and absolve the other.
As for actually running out of gas, I don’t consider it a big deal. It’s unfortunate that the service people were called and it ended up costing more than it needed to, but big deal. The belt on my dryer broke and I didn’t know that was the problem. Had I known, I could have saved money by fixing it myself (and I did at a later time when it broke again), but not knowing isn’t a character flaw.
Anyone who would make a big deal of this event, ridiculing their partner for it (I’m looking at you catsix) is being a snot for no reason. The OP’s woman doesn’t have to take responsibility for the gauge being wrong. This is firmly in the category of accident or unfortunate event that a reasonable person can simply have happen without them being reviled.
Of course, her spastic behavior afterwards is uncalled for, as well. This is something to laugh about, though snideness from the holier than thou types who always pop out of the woodwork at these times probably is inspiring her.
Wow I’m surprised how mature everyone here is. I don’t get mad very often, and I get over it really quick, but when I’m pissed, I mean REALLY pissed, I get incredibly irrational. I do indeed swear at my beloved, I will try my damndest to blame the problem on him, and I’m not above throwing stuff (not at my husband, mind you). Call me a baby and tell me I’m childish, but that’s the way it is, and it’s been like that for the two of us for over 17 years now.
I have no problem maintaining my car. I know when to take it in, and I can do the regular stuff by myself. I regularly check coolant, and oil levels, I change the air filter, and just had to check a fuse and change a blinker bulb. Running out of gas is not so much “maintenance”, as much as getting ones head in the game.
I’ve run out of gas twice. Once I just wasn’t paying any attention, and simply missed it, the other I pushed too far. Once it didn’t bother me, the other time, I was furious. My husband has also run out of gas. In fact, once he ran out of gas with me in car. I thought it was funny, he did not. I even did the “walk of shame” with him. (The “walk of shame” is the walk down the entrance ramp with the bright red gas can, onto the expressway where the car is sitting with the hazards on.).
My husband never would have lied to me about it being “fixed”. He wouldn’t have lied, because I’m not stupid enough to believe it, and I would have found it patronizing. Just because bottonjockey’s wife won’t admit she’s wrong, doesn’t mean that she doesn’t know it. Like her, I may eventually admit my mistakes but it certainly isn’t going to be forthcoming, especially after I’ve embarrassed myself by throwing a tantrum.
Last time I did any checking, it didn’t mean that when one party commits an act of stupidity the other party ensures such things continue by telling fibs to prevent the first party from having to own up to screwing up.
Seems like it, because if the OP lies to the wife and says that they ‘fixed’ the problem, the next time she runs the car that low on gas it might be a whole hell of a lot more than 86$ to fix.
So correcting the wrong impression and behavior so as to avoid a larger, more expensive problem later is a bad idea because there might be animosity? Better to have out the animosity and fix the problem before it grows into a fuel pump or engine that has to be replaced.
I find it hard to believe that nobody ever told this person, an adult woman, that she should not let the needle go that low anyway because it is an imprecise device and that treating it otherwise can leave you stranded without any gas in your car, or worse, severely damage the fuel system. It absolutely amazes me that there are people who don’t know this. It’s not exactly advanced car knowledge.
I must be a moron for thinking that some animosity now versus hundreds of dollars in repairs when this ‘running on fumes’ behavior continues is the preferable choice.
I’d be amazed if things would have gone that way. I think given the conversation posted here and how irate the wife got, no matter when he pulled out the gas can, there would’ve been the ‘Are you calling me a liar?’ fight.
Look at me all you want. I can’t imagine how a person could be an adult and not only not know that it’s a very bad idea to let the gas guage get that low but also flatly refuse to go into the dealership to get the car herself after such a mistake. What on earth would she do if she were a single woman?
I do not see the ‘good’ in him going to get the car from the dealership or in telling her that they ‘fixed’ a problem with the car to spare her ego.
I reread your original post and now I think that I misread it the first time. When you said:
Are you talking about what you would do and find reasonable, or are you simply talking about what you think would happen in general?
If the latter, I tend to disagree, but not with any vitriol, and I apologize for the misread. If the former, then my post was directed at you and at people who would ridicule their partners for a very minor incident.
Actually, this sounds just about perfect to me. Being in a relationship definitel isn’t about teaching the other person lessons, and I’d get the hell out of a relationship in which that was the attitude. It’s about helping one another out.
Buttonjockey’s wife now has the information she didn’t have before. It’s up to her what to do with it. Whether or not her husband insists on being right, she’ll have the information; if he drops it, if he says, “I was wrong,” she’ll still have the information. The only benefit from insisting on being right is to keep the fight going.
And catsix, believe it or not, before this thread I’d never heard that you could damage the fuel system by driving on fumes. It’s certainly not universal knowledge.
If you can explain to me how the course of action I described is guaranteed to “ensure such things continue,” I’d be inclined to agree with you.
And it’s possible this won’t happen again, in which case all the vitriol and animosity caused by this situation is wasted energy. Ain’t “what-if” fun?
And what if the fuel pump or engine never needs repair, but this incident grows into a major stumbling block in their marriage because neither party will back down. Is it worth it then? “Yeah, my wife and I divorced, and I’m paying $300 a month in alimony for the next three years, but by God she’s learned her lesson about gassing up a car!”
I agree that buttonjockey308’s wife is overreacting in this situation. Even if the gas gauge is malfunctioning, at some point one has to accept responsibility.
For whatever reason, though, this incident seems to have the wife on full-blown adrenalin-pumping fight-or-flight mode. Continuing to bring the matter up, or attempting to force her to take responsibility, could do some serious damage to the overall relationship. Only buttonjockey308 can make that call. But don’t fool yourself into thinking that seemingly healthy relationships can’t fall apart for problems that seem truly trivial to those not involved.
But you should also stop by Home Depot and get an empty plastic gas can to put in her trunk. Unless this is Really making you re-evaluate who you are going to be spending the rest of your life with, let it go.
But the next time she calls from the site of another break-down, ask her what the gas gage reads. And if she refuses to answer, tell her there’s an empty gas can in the trunk & to enjoy her walk. Then hang up & take the reciever off the hook.
You don’t have to teach her a ‘lesson’. But you’d be a fool to be an enabler.
I’m talking about out of all the married couples and living-together-type couples I know, when the woman screws up the man gets yelled at and is eventually told to drop it to spare her feelings, but when the man screws up, it’s remembered and used against him for a pretty considerable length of time.
My mother has never let my father live it down that he ruined the family dinner by not following her instructions and self-cleaning a pork roast. It’s been more than fifteen years, and she still brings it up every time he wants to cook something to belittle him.
On the contrary, my father has let my mother believe that there was nothing at all wrong with her leaving the car running and in gear while she ‘just ran inside for only a minute’ and let the car roll over a hillside, thereby totalling the car because of course, she screamed at him about how the car had to have been fine because ‘it’s not like it was on a grade or anything’.
Guy screws up, it’s forever. Girl screws up, lie to spare her feelings. That’s just the impression that I get.
Because I don’t see any indication that the wife has actually learned that it’s not a good idea to let the needle on the gas tank get that low. There’s not even an acknowledgement of that in the ‘from now on’ sense. Nothing other than ‘I can’t be wrong, and I’m not going to go in there myself and fork over the cash for this.’
I doubt it’d be ‘wasted’. I’d take that as an indication that despite all her bitching and immaturity about it now, she learned from being made to deal with her mistake like an adult.
I think that if something like this precipitates something like a divorce, the relationship couldn’t have been healthy to begin with. Quite frankly, the fact that she reacted in such an overblown manner is, at least to me, alarming. Being hot headed about it at the moment is understandable, but days or weeks later being unable to admit that you fucked up seems to be pretty unreasonable for an adult.
IMO Cat, this is a phenomenon that exists simply because of how men think, versus how women think. Men use logic and reason to solve problems, women use emotions, emotions that are tied to very other thing in their lives, which is why the fact that you leave your bath towel on the shower curtain rod, rather than the hanger, will remind her of the time when you were staring at her room mate/best friend’s boobs at that party. She felt the same way then as she does now, it’s all interconnected, rather than case by case.
FWIW, just as LolaBaby said, I let it drop, with one final warning about the consequences of driving that low on fuel. I’ve given her the new, empty fuel can, and the odometer hint, and from now on, she’s on her own.
This isn’t anything so heavy as to cause us any real damage, (though I can’t say the same for the poor Taurus ) I’d just like to see her take the responsibility, and next time, if there is one, she will.
Whew! It was getting as heated here as it seemed to be at the buttonjockey homestead.
All’s well that ends well, then. I think you did the right thing. Hey, relationships are hard and sometimes you bite your tongue and sometimes you make A. Who doesn’t? Well, apparently Catsix doesn’t do the former. I can only thank my lucky stars he’s not my problem!
IMHO, it’s not words and actions that bust up relationships. It’s what the parties do with the words and actions (of course, with the exception of continual abuse). It’s whether you can move on or feel the need to bolt. There have been very few times I’ve felt the need to bolt my marriage and thankfully I didn’t. In retrospect, those were highly emotionally charged times and I wasn’t fully rational at the time. Yes, SO and I have uttered those wonderfully powerful words to each in the heat of an argument. For some couples, this is allowed in the rules of engagement. But once the argument is over, the power of those words has faded. Neither of us cares in the least. SO draws the line at name-calling and it’s only fair I accept his threshold for tolerance (I do try!). In the end, we realize you fight, you make up, you move on. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Sauron, elbows, and Left Hand of Dorkness were the voices of reason here. I’d be willing to bet you can’t place a value on perspective.
Maybe the swearing is being able to express yourself without having to hold back because you love each other. A hearty “fuck you” in the middle of an arguement never made me feel less respected.
Oh, if you knew me in real life, I am a really bad “potty mouth”. You should hear me when I am alone in my truck and someone cuts me off. I guess I just don’t use it in a fight with loved ones.
