My partner and I have been together for 3 years, and have been living together for \~11 months. We have a dog and we eat dinner together most nights unless he is staying late at work (we switch off cooking). We have a really happy relationship and are planning to get engaged early next year.
Here’s where we’re running into an issue: I find it incredibly helpful to have a sense of when he might be home each day. This varies from day to day and from project to project. We’ve talked about this at length in the past, and I’ve asked that he send me a quick message letting me know if he’ll be staying past 6, and an approximate ETD if that’s the case – ideally before 6pm so I don’t assume he’s headed home while he’s still at the office. This helps me plan my evening, know if I need to walk the pup, plan when to start cooking or if I should make a portion for him to pop in the fridge, etc. I don’t care how late he works or when he gets home – he loves his job, I enjoy alone time, and we get great quality time together at some point every week.
He really struggles with this ask. He has, in the past, texted at his ETA home to say he is still at the office – when I had assumed he was already nearly home. I’m writing this post today because earlier, he went into the office and said he’d be home by 1 – great! At 12, he texted that he wanted to run to Home Depot on the way home – I said great! At 1, I asked for an updated plan for the afternoon and he said he’d be home more like 3:30 – I said, great! He then texted around 1:30 saying that he felt frustrated. “I think what this is pinging in me is a like, ‘I’m wiped out, but I’ve still gotta put effort into communicating my every move or she’ll be discombobulated.’ Can’t I just… do things without having to be monitored like a state official?” It’s now nearly 4:00 and he’s not home and hasn’t updated me further.
So I’m left asking: Am I requesting something unreasonable? How can I either communicate what I need more clearly or get comfortable with never knowing when he’ll be home? I love him and want to figure out a solution where he doesn’t feel controlled and I feel able to plan my evening.
For job-related background: He is a freelancer working in a deadline-oriented creative industry, usually on contracts that last for 3-6 months at a time. He goes into an office most days for work and can set his own schedule 90% of the time as long as the work gets done by the deadline. I work from home and have a much less demanding job – I manage communications for a school and am largely on-call. I work \~20 hours/week, but sometimes those hours are in the evenings or over weekends depending on what’s happening at any given time.
TL;DR: My partner doesn’t effectively communicate when he’ll be home, even though I’ve asked him to many times. Is it unreasonable to ask for an ETA?
14 comments
I like a heads up with people’s intention too. And I let my boyfriend know when to expect me. It’s courtesy and cooperation.
Let this go with this guy and assume he’ll be home by 6.30. Live your life around that. Walk the dog, have dinner…if it’s too hard for him too give you an ETA so you can organize that work meeting to not happen when he’s about to walk in, just make it not your problem.
Why don’t you limit the request? If all you really need to know is whether he’ll be home for dinner, why not have a phone or text check-in around the same time every day, and ask him to let you know if he’ll be home before or after 6.
Or, if you can make a weekly schedule for dinner-making/dog-walking, and then you know each Sunday who is doing what when.
This is a no brainer. Common courtesy in any relationship is a must.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable at all. But at the same time unless you have kids maybe you should just get used to the idea of separate lives for now? If that’s not what you want then this guy is not for you. You could both turn on location tracking software for your phones too.
So I’m totally sympathetic to your frustration, but as somebody who mostly sets his own hours, I also understand why this is so difficult for him.
Usually when you set your own hours, you work until you hit some sort of internal metric. “I got enough done today, I can stop now.” Or sometimes you’re in the flow and being super productive and don’t want to stop because you don’t know if you’re going to get it back tomorrow – an extra hour or two today might save you five hours later in the week.
And in the moment, at, say, 5:30 if he knows he’s going to be there another hour he’s not SUPER aware of the time because he’s in flow, and stopping to text you takes him out of flow.
So the reason why he has a hard time telling you when he’s going to be home is that he doesn’t know when he’s leaving work until he’s ready to leave work. It can be impossible to predict even 15 minutes ahead of time.
One solution is sharing locations on your phones. The idea is that, hey, you’re hungry, you want dinner – you don’t have to bother him. You can just check his location, “okay, he’s in his car!” or “Nope, still at the office” and make your plans accordingly.
And his lack of communication means he has to accept that your plans are going to focus less on him. You need to let go a little of his work schedule driving so much of your typical evening. This is probably the source of like 75% of your frustration: that you feel hamstrung by his choices. Well, stop letting them dictate your life. You’re hungry, you make dinner. If you see that he’s on the way home, you make enough for him. If not, you trust that he’s an adult and can figure it out.
And if he doesn’t like coming home to find that you’ve just finished eating or whatever, you can say, “I’m happy to accommodate you when I know what your plans are. So if you tell me you’re going to be home at 630 and mean it, I don’t mind waiting. But I’m not guessing anymore, so absent specific, trustworthy information, I’m not waiting.”
And then your ask of him becomes smaller. Him saying, “I’ll be home by 1” and then not leaving the office by 3 without notice is unacceptable – but your ask is simply, “If you tell me when you’re going to be home, honor that.” You get to stop asking so much, so your asks feel like less of a burden. If he wants the benefits, he can be proactive about things.
Wait then for him to text you “I AM ON MY WAY.” Until The, Do as you need to do with your own at home schedule and put his dinner(If need be)in the microwave. Eat alone if hungry. (Or wait for him to text you as to when he is on his way. Sounds up and down). He needs space and not have to answer as to every minute he is here and there and where. Happy Holidays!!!!!
I dated someone like this for a very long time. Yes, dream world is that he would understand it’s a bit inconsiderate but in reality, he’s probably never going to be the person who says they are going to be home at x time and then actually shows. As long as this is the only area he is a bit selfish in, I’d let it go.
My advice: stop letting it impact your life. Make a schedule for the dog (split who walks him, either he takes mornings, you do evenings, or rotate days), plan a date night and let him know “hey, dinner tonight is at 7, can’t wait to see you!” But stop monitoring him. He isn’t a child, he doesn’t have a curfew, and while it would be lovely to know when he is going to be around it’s just going to drive you insane trying to make it work.
I’m pretty sympathetic to both of you here. You don’t want your evening to be held hostage to having no idea whether you will be doing things together. At the same time, being so tightly held to a schedule that I had to update if I decided to do an errand on the way home would drive me absolutely bonkers. I think there’s probably a lot of middle ground here but it’s hard to say without knowing each of you.
Can you get let him know that any night he isn’t home by X time you’re going to plan your evening without him? Let him figure out his own dinner. Walk the dog and make something you like for dinner and enjoy your alone time. Just stop waiting around for him, let it be his job to let you know if he does want you to wait for him on a specific night.
The only way to combat this is to make his negligence impact him. Don’t prepare dinner if you don’t hear from him. Go out with friends and don’t bother telling him. Unless he suffers consequences he won’t change.
What you’re asking isnt unreasonable.
What hes feeling also isnt unreasonable though, and I would feel the same with the amount of checking in it sounds like you require. Especially on weekends.
Can you guys set a regular time for after work, where if hes not going to be home by that time, he just has to check in then? Say 630. If you hear nothing he’ll be home by 630, if not he’ll tell you. He may occasionally forget, I’d let that slide if you want a marriage where he doesnt feel monitored.
Alternatively or in addition, can you also change your habits so that him being home or not effects you less? For example, say you decide on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, those are the nights you cook dinner and walk the dog. If hes there when you eat, great. If not, you pop the leftovers in the fridge.
Then the other nights, can they be his night to cook and walk the dog? And if hes actually not going to be able to do that, he needs to let you know by 6 so you can order takeout or whatever.
I spent a lot of the early years of my marriage trying to plan around my husband’s schedule. All this did was set me up for frustration and disappointment, which in turn led him to feel frustrated that he caused me to feel that way.
Stop trying to plan around him. The dog needs to be walked at a fixed time, if you’re the one home, you’re walking the dog. You eat dinner around 6:30 every night, unless he’s specifically asked that you hold dinner for him, just eat your dinner when you like! Plan your evening to your own specifications, and if he feels left out *he* can communicate more.
My husband and I sort out the necessary logistics for our day/week, and if there’s something special I/he want to attend we sort that out in advance as well. Otherwise we recognize the day to day won’t always line up and we appreciate the time we have independent from each other, and are pleasantly surprised when one of us can make it home early/ have extra time together.
Unpopular opinion (maybe).
He’s getting frustrated….over a simple text message, she isn’t even riding him for being late. She just wants to know when he’s coming home. He needs to get over himself and give her a clearer ETA. It’s not that big a deal. It literally costs 1 minute, grab phone, swipe, “sorry coming home 3 hours late”.
If he decides to message “I’m home at 2” and then “sorry doing something else will be at 3” oh wait “I decided to do something else will be 5”
He could just sit, think, decide what all he is going to do and go “meh, be home around 6”.
It sort’ve just sounds like you want to keep tabs on him. And I get it. I’ve been that girl. I’ve also made it seem like my need to know when he was going to be home was strictly to “plan my evening better..” but really I was just wanting to know where he was. If I want to plan my evening I’m going to plan my evening with or without him. That’s a healthy way to go about it. Texting him right when the clock hits 1 bc he’s not home yet sounds a bit annoying. Maybe start asking yourself if you really trust him.. and if you are comfortable having a life outside of keeping constant tabs on him. Just share your iPhone location if it’s that serious. That way you’ll always know. 🙂
You’re not unreasonable and I sympathize with your frustration. My husband has the same time blindness your partner does. I decided years ago to let it go. This was not a hill I would die on. My husband has never gotten better. I’ve adjusted. I’m not saying you should. I’m saying you need to decide if this is a deal breaker because he’ll likely always be like this. If he’s home great if he’s not do what you want. If this isn’t acceptable to you though you need to sit him down and show him the texts and how incredibly inconsistent and inconsiderate he’s being.