First, let me assure you that I am not attempting to fan the flames of an argument here–in fact, I haven’t even had an opportunity to HAVE the argument, and I am posting this thread in attempt to avoid one.
As many of you know, Brian took a 6-hour car trip to visit family in Knoxville this weekend. Before he left, I told him twice to call me when he got in. I knew he would be getting in late, and I didn’t want to bother anyone. I figured I’d get a call around midnight or 1:00 when he got settled.
I fell asleep at 11:00 that night, and woke up at 4:00. I received no phone call. Spent a rather horrible night (and part of the morning at work) wondering what in holy hell happened to him. He didn’t call until 5:20 in the afternoon the next day (and thankfully got my answering machine) after I found out he was still alive–because somehow, even though he couldn’t find the time to call me to tell me he got in safely, he found the time to post to Great Debates at 3:30 in the morning. And in the phone call I got, he never even mentioned the fact that he’d never called me the night before.
Now, I won’t mislead you all here. I’m pissed off. Highly so. But I’ve already had my rant over at Fathom. Now, I’m looking for support. Do you call your spouse or SO once you arrive safely after a trip? Does your spouse call you? Do you get upset if you don’t hear anything? Should I have a right to be upset over this?
This would also piss me off highly, Drainy. This is one of my pet peeves. If someone tells me they are going to call, then I expect them to call. Especially if it’s someone you love and they know you will be worried to no end if you don’t hear from them.
Men seem to be especially bad about this, they just don’t think. Geesh I can really relate to this one, and I’ve had some major fights with SOs regarding this very thing. You love the guy, you worry about him, and you expect him to show enough consideration to let you know he’s ok.
You are totally right.
I call, hubby does when he remembers. Which is not very often. And, yes, it does piss me off. He also comes home much later than expected after a night out with the guys without calling. Grrrrr.
Usually, his reasoning is something like this: He loses track of time (another pet peeve of mine, the man is never on time), realizes he’s oh, 2 hours late in getting home and then is afraid to call me because he is both afraid of me getting pissed off and me demanding he come home. So, he thinks that this time he can just sneak in without me hearing even though it has never worked in the past. I always wake up, you’d think after 7 years he’d realize this. Ya gotta admire his optimism. :rolleyes:
But, he’s not a bad guy and neither is Brian. It has gotten slightly better over the years, I figure by the time he’s 65 I’ll have him thoroughly trained.
Drain, been there. Half of you is worried sick that he’s dead (in the middle of the night your imagination goes NUTS) and the other half of you wants to strangle him for worrying you.
So, yes, of course you have every reason to be worried and mad. You care about him and were worried about his safety. That is NOT unreasonable.
In his defense, though, if it was very late, he may have thought it would be inconsiderate to wake you up to tell you he was fine. That’s not an entirely unreasonable assumption.
But now that you’ve clearly communicated your feelings to him (in a manner other than having him read it on the SDMB, I hope), and he knows how pissed and worried you were, I’m sure he will do whatever is necessary to make amends (Hint to Brian: Chocolate.).
Now comes the hard part for you. You need to forgive him. Because it was insensitive, yes, but it wasn’t an earth-shattering betrayal. So let it go.
In Brian’s defense perhaps he just didn’t want to wake you up? Maybe he got in later than expected, or when he did get in he got caught up in the reunion and by the time he could break away he figured you were asleep already? Of course, you and I know he still should have called, but maybe he was trying to be considerate in a way that backfired? If this is the case, now he knows that when you say call when he gets in you mean no matter what.
This is not to say that you shouldn’t be upset…but all new couples have to go through this period of defining the rules. Trust me, you’ll go through a lot of these “I can’t believe you didn’t know this was important” moments during your years together.
This must be a chick thing. Guys assume that you will get from point a to b without killing yourself. And if when we do make it from point a to b, we feel just a little bit silly calling someone in the middle of the night to tell them about it.
Expecting such a call in the middle of the night makes you just little bit of a mother hen.
I had a GF who once insisted on just such a call when I made a trip, and had the nerve to sound irritated when that call woke her up.
See, there are things he knows. We’ve been through this every single time he leaves my place and makes the 8-hour drive home. He knows to call no matter what, even if it’s going to wake me up. There have been times when he’s called me at 4 in the morning, because that’s when he got home. He knows I’d rather wake up for 10 minutes than wake up in the middle of the night and be up all night. Just call. 30 seconds. “Hi, honey, I made it in, now I’m going to hang out with my dad.” So very not difficult to do.
Frankly, I’m not sure what the fuck got into him this time. Considering the last time he took a trip this long he got in an accident, I think a phone call would have been doubly expected. This is worse than the time he was an hour and a half late getting home (he got lost on the way home from my place–amazing, since he’d taken the trip something like 15 times), and rather than waste two minutes calling me while he stopped for gas to tell me that he was going to be late getting home, he waited until he made it home to call, by which time I was worried sick. I figured after that incident, he learned that it’s abso-frickin-lutely necessary to call when things are going to be different from what I expect. And for the most part, he’s good about it. But if I take 10 minutes longer than I tell him I’m going to when I’m sending a fax from the Kinko’s down the block, he thinks I’m murdered in a back alley somewhere, yet when he’s an hour and a half late from driving, I’m paranoid and irrational. (but not in a BAD way)
Lisa, I believe I’ll take your advice about forgiveness (that is, AFTER I get a very sincere apology). But since it happened before, does this count as it happening again? I don’t have a meat tenderizer–I usually just use a heavy can or something. Does that mean I have to go out and buy one? I mean, as satisfying as it would be right now to beat him to death with a can of kidney beans, I think a meat tenderizer has a little more panache. Or maybe a ball-peen hammer? I don’t have one of those either.
Damn, I have a decided lack of blunt intstruments. Guess I’ll just have to use my bare hands. Much more satisfying.
(note to the silliness-impaired: The previous two paragraphs were written with my tongue planted about as firmly in my cheek as it can go. I promise you, nobody’s going to list me in the “People you know who have committed heinous crimes” thread. At least not this time.)
This must be a chick thing. Guys assume that you will get from point a to b without killing yourself. And if when we do make it from point a to b, we feel just a little bit silly calling someone in the middle of the night to tell them about it.
Not necessarily…My husband is the one who worries when I am late back from shopping. In the middle of a Saturday afternoon. He has to remind me to call, but always remembers to call me.
And spooje, I’m going to have to disagree with you again. Expecting such a call in the middle of the night makes you just little bit of a mother hen. Simply having that expectation might indicate motherly tendencies, but if someone says he is going to call and then fails to do so, he is being thoughtless. If he doesn’t want to call, he should say so at the outset. If he promises to call, he needs to follow through. It’s not a matter of being henpecked, it’s simply good manners.
Drain, I’ll suggest (from the standpoint of 12 years of marriage) that the two of you need to sit down and hash this out, so that you each understand what the other’s expectations are. Sure, I feel silly calling home if I decide to make an unexpected stop-after all, I’m a big girl-but I do it because I know that failing to do so causes him to worry, and I love him too much to cause him pain, even unintenionally.
Sure, I would call. I always call. It’s the thing to do. But it does take some major work as I have to call through a relay & find a accessible phone in the city Im going to be. But I can also just pick up the phone, I can hear it ring, then I just say that I made it.
I once was hours overdue getting home from a hair appointment. When I walked in to the house I caught the lovely mr. obfusciatrist on the phone with 911, trying to give them a description of me. [The hairdresser decided to bleach out my hair using organic ingredients that took four hours to work, and I lost track of time.]
This isn’t a short drive to the other side of town. It’s a very long solo drive done at night. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to ask that the driver call when reaching the destination safely. While the chances are good that there won’t be any problems, let’s thing of a worse-case scenario…
The car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, and he has to walk 10 miles to get to a phone.
Falls asleep at the wheel and uh… we won’t go there.
Gets into a car accident that leaves him uninjured, but his car nonfunctional.
Gets pulled over for speeding, and in the process, the cop finds something fishy (rightly or no) and arrests him.
The car is stolen while he is using a restroom at a rest stop.
Spooje – personally Brian should feel fortunate that he has loving people who care enough to ask for that phone call.
My wife is also a big fan of the “call me when you get there” philosophy. I am not. Sometimes I agree to call, sometimes I will not agree.
I think that this is a good compromise.
I’d like to apologize, to Brian and everyone else here, for bringing this on the boards. As I mentioned, I didn’t do it to say, “Look at what an asshole Brian is.” I did it to make sure I wasn’t crazy for acting the way I do. But regardless of my intent, it appears that I’ve hurt Brian by airing this publicly, and for that I apologize.
