Dating Disasters·
THE TIMING LIE
A couple argue over chronic lateness as one partner lies about start times, exposing a pattern of tension, carelessness, and a fragile dynamic.
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He told his girlfriend the event started at noon. It didn't. He said 1:30, and the lie blew up in his face.
The poster says his girlfriend is "really bad at being early or on time for things," and that the pattern has become a familiar source of tension. According to him, lateness starts piling up almost every time they have to go somewhere together. "She has IBS," he explains. "If she is too tired she will insist on getting an hour of sleep in." She also "putters around the house watching tv shows on her phone while she tries to do other things," insists on breakfast, takes a long time choosing clothes, spends a lot of time on makeup, and packs extra items like wipes, water, and sometimes a change of clothes.
He says he has already talked to her about it more than once. "I've tried speaking to her about this before," he writes, saying he has told her she needs to focus on getting ready so they are not late. Her reaction, he says, is usually either to get upset that he brought it up or to insist that she really is hurrying and he is not noticing. Other times, she says she knows they are running late and tells him to go without her. She does not drive, he adds, so if they cannot leave together, she will likely just skip the event.
Yesterday, they were supposed to go to a small event one of his friends had put on. He told her, "we needed to be there for 12pm." Then the usual delays kicked in. She kept asking whether he was mad because they were running late. She still was not finished until 12:16 p.m.
At that point, she apologized and asked how long it would take to get there, and whether his friends would be angry. That's when he changed the story. He told her "it actually started at 1:30pm."
She was furious. She called him "such a huge asshole" for lying and making her rush, and said that was not the point. He replied that "it was okay because I lied" and that this was good because now they were going to arrive early for something. She shot back that this "wasn't the point."
After that, she spent the whole day speaking to him as little as possible.
In an edit, the poster adds that she does not have ADHD or ADD, and says this is a very frequent problem for both of them. They have been together for four years, he writes, and they can probably count on one hand the number of things they've been early to.