Entitled People·
FRONT SEAT DRAMA
On a New Year's drive home, a husband's blunt rule forces his wife either to the back seat or behind the wheel, turning the ride into a bruising power struggle.
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On the drive home from New Year's, a husband told his wife to get in the back seat or drive herself.
It came after a three- to four-hour holiday trip that cut through two metro areas, where traffic was bad, the weather was worse, and every slowdown seemed to sharpen the tension in the car. The family had spent New Year's with the wife's in-laws, and the return trip had barely begun before the argument over the front passenger seat boiled over.
The wife usually rides up front. She gets nervous in traffic, and on longer drives she gets car sick. Dramamine is not an option because of an allergic reaction, so she has to manage it another way. But the husband says her shotgun-seat behavior makes driving harder, not easier. When traffic changes, he says, she grabs the handle, puts a hand on the dashboard, gasps, and tells him to watch out.
According to him, that had already played out on the trip to her family's place. Traffic had slowed because of weather and congestion, and he says she spent the whole drive reacting nervously and blaming him for how he was driving. He says he warned her multiple times that "she can't control herself because she's nervous in traffic." He also said, "It's incredibly distracting," and told her that "you can't control anyone else on the road and that accidents happen."
By the time it was time to head back, he had decided he was done with it.
He told her the rule: she could sit in the back seat and let their 14-year-old son ride up front, or she could drive. "it's either that or she drives us home," he said. He also suggested she "take some Nyquil or something else to help her sleep."
The wife objected. She said the back seat would make her car sick. She refused to drive. In the end, she reluctantly got into the back with their 11-year-old daughter, while the son took the front passenger seat.
The ride home was quieter. No one in the post described more arguing after that. But afterward, the wife said she felt ill for the whole trip. She said she felt humiliated, and wanted her husband to be more considerate. The husband, for his part, said, "I didn't want to make a big deal out of anything."
The family had made it home, but the front seat had turned into the main event.