Some thoughts on the post:
First, it’s not clear to me what he was actually doing to rush his wife, and what changed.
The only specific thing I found that he does to rush his wife is give a 40 or 45 minute buffer:
To her, it seems like no big deal because I always manage to rush her by telling her the time of an event 45 minutes earlier.
… I used to give her an ETA 40 minutes earlier. A week ago, I told her I wouldn’t be doing that anymore and that I expected her to act like an adult and be more responsible.
This time, as I’d already told her before, I didn’t give her the extra 40-minute buffer.
I’m not sure exactly what he means by that, but I assume he means something like saying they have to be there 40-45 minutes earlier than start time, or saying they have to leave 40-45 minutes earlier than they actually do.
I think of buffer time as just a standard part of figuring out timing for going anywhere. If I have a restaurant reservation at 7pm, and it takes 30 minutes to drive there, I might say we need to be there by 6:45pm and need to leave at 6pm. This gives extra time for a bit of traffic, getting into the car and realizing you forgot something inside, or it being difficult to find parking. I would give even more buffer time if I expected traffic and parking to be bad, if there will be a line, or if it’s really important.
Adding in buffer time just seems like a basic part of time management. I am not sure if that is what he means though. He is calling what he does mentally exhausting and a burden:
I’ve told her that it’s mentally exhausting for me to always have to stay on top of making sure we both get ready according to plan.
It was so ironic that I didn’t even feel like reminding her. I’m done with the mental burden of always rushing and planning.
The only thing he specified that he did differently this time was not giving her a 40 minute buffer. He says he didn’t “remind her”, but it’s not clear what that means. What didn’t he remind her of? I think he means he didn’t tell her that they needed to leave now/soon if they wanted to get there on time. But she seems to have not actually known they needed to leave at that point – she was surprised and upset when she got to the show because she didn’t realize they were late – so that wouldn’t have really been a reminder. It sounds like she actually did not know when the show started, or else I assume she would have been upset on the way to the show because she would have already realized she was missing it.
One interpretation that seems consistent with his telling is that they were going to a show that started at 8pm, so he told her they needed to be there at 8pm. And she assumed he meant that they needed to be just getting there at 8pm, and that would still give them time to park, maybe get food, stand in line, etc. So she thought being late would be OK, and they’d just have to rush. But really what he meant was that doors open at 7:30pm, and the show she wanted to see started at exactly 8pm, so they needed to be fully inside the venue and seated at 8pm.
Based on how he describes the event, something in that ballpark seems most likely to me. He says:
We arrived, and she realized what had happened.
That doesn’t make any sense if she actually new the true start time. If she was fully aware that the part of the show she wanted to see was happening from, say 8-8:30pm, then she would have realized that they were missing that part of the show while they were driving to the venue. The fact that she didn’t know what was happening until they got there makes it seem like she actually didn’t know the true start times.
He said:
It was her birthday this weekend, and I got her tickets to an event featuring several performers, including her favorite artists in the first act.
So he bought the tickets and was going to bring her to this show as her birthday present. It’s possible she had never even seen the tickets. When someone buys you tickets to bring you somewhere as a gift, it is common for them to hold the tickets the entire time. (And even when they don’t, it’s common for just one person to have the tickets, and it can actually be kind of socially awkward to insist to see or carry your own ticket.) And if someone is bringing you somewhere for your birthday, it is also common for them to be in charge of the time management and making sure you leave and get there in time. That is fairly standard for when you are specifically giving someone to an “experience” gift that you are bringing them to: you take care of all the details of making sure everything is ready and that you get there on time.
The actual story doesn’t really have a lot of details about the main issue. He isn’t being clear about what he was actually doing, and his telling doesn’t make much sense if you just take it at face value. He says that he had a mental burden from getting them places on time, but he doesn’t give any examples of the mental burden. The one example he does gives sounds like it could be just basic time management (giving buffer time), but it’s hard to tell what was really happening.
He decided to change policy on short notice, after five years of doing this. He apparently had one conversation with her about it, and expected her to remember what he was doing. And it’s not even clear what exactly he said to her or how he explained it:
… I used to give her an ETA 40 minutes earlier. A week ago, I told her I wouldn’t be doing that anymore and that I expected her to act like an adult and be more responsible.
So, according to him, he told her he would no longer be giving her 40 minutes of buffer time. (I assume he means he’d no longer give a 40 minute earlier start time, not an ETA, because that wouldn’t really make sense.) But when he was talking about what he did on the day, he said that he didn’t remind her. So that actually seems like something different than the thing he told her he would no longer be doing.
He did this specifically because he wanted to punish her:
This time, I wanted her to experience the consequences of her actions.
He actually seemed happy that she was upset:
The whole time, I knew she was missing out on her favorite artist because she didn’t take me seriously. It was so ironic that I didn’t even feel like reminding her.
She said it seemed like I was liking the rise it got from her and asked why I couldn’t set my “ego” aside for one day.
And he specifically chose to do this on her birthday. After five years, he decided the time to teach her a lesson was specifically on her birthday, and with a live show that she couldn’t just rebook to another date (instead of, say, a restaurant reservation or a movie, which could rebooked for later).
So far, he sounds like a jerk to me. I actually can’t tell if she is doing anything wrong from the story. It sounds like maybe she has bad time management skills, and does things to make them late. But since his own telling seems kind of incoherent to me, it also seems possible that he is the one with bad time management and unrealistic expectations, and he is just blaming her because he doesn’t like what she does with her time. Maybe he normally has really unrealistic expectations of how long it should take to get ready and go somewhere, and thinks needing to give any buffer time is some major concession to her, instead of just recognizing that it is a normal part of time management.
So my judgement at this point is definitely YTA to him. It could potentially be ESH if there was more info about him actually needing a lot of work into making sure she gets places on time. But he didn’t give enough info for me to be confident that is happening, whereas he did give enough info for me to think he is being a jerk.
She said the whole point of the event was to see the performances of those artists, who we’d just missed. She was incredibly upset and kept crying off and on during the event.
It’s so troubling that he did this to his wife and on her birthday, and still thinks he is just in the right here. Does he even like her? He says things in the post that indicate maybe he doesn’t:
… she’s too caught up with herself, constantly taking photos …
I find it really silly how she turns everything we do into a photo session, and at this point, I’ve stopped agreeing to take her photos altogether.
This part at the end is really troubling:
I was in the downstairs restroom when she texted me saying I wasn’t welcome in the bedroom that night. I ignored her message and went in while she was changing. She looked like she wanted to kill me, and I simply told her that her saying I’m not welcome was irrelevant because it’s my room too.
I agree that in general one spouse doesn’t have the right to take the bed after an argument. If they don’t want to sleep together, they can take the couch. (Though I think that if one of the spouses did something wrong and hurtful, the spouse that did something wrong should be willing to let the other spouse have the bed in that kind of situation.)
But the fact that you share a room doesn’t give you the right to walk in on the other person changing if they don’t want you there. You both share the bathroom too, but that doesn’t give you the right to walk in on your spouse on the toilet or in the shower if they don’t want that. People are entitled to privacy even when they are married and even when they share a room. Marrying someone does NOT entitle you to see them naked any time you want to. Even if the default in your marriage is to not have that kind of privacy, you both need to be respectful any time the other person asks for privacy or indicates they don’t want you there.
When she said he couldn’t sleep in the bed, I would support his right to say that it’s his bed too, and if she doesn’t want to sleep together she could sleep on the couch. (Even if I think he was in the wrong, and he hurt her, and he should be apologizing and going out of his way to make amends, including letting her have the bed. I still think he has the right to not give up the bed.)
But I don’t think he has the right to see her changing. He walked in on her changing when she had already made it clear she did not want him there, and then when she looked unhappy with him (“She looked like she wanted to kill me”) he just stayed in the room and said that he was justified to be there (“I simply told her that her saying I’m not welcome was irrelevant because it’s my room too”). People have the right to change in privacy, regardless of whether they share a room.
There’s no way to tell how she was feeling during this. But if she was feeling threatened, it makes sense that she wouldn’t have said anything. He already seemed happy that he taught her a lesson that made her cry on her birthday. He ignored her when she said she didn’t want him in the room and came in anyway while she was changing, and then ignored the fact that she looked upset that he was there. So it’s quite possible that from her perspective, any further escalation could lead to violence. She may not have personally felt this way – it’s not possible to tell either way from his story.
His actions could reasonably be taken as threatening by a reasonable person though. And if you are physically weaker than someone and in a vulnerable position, it makes sense to not push to find out if they are actually trying to be threatening or if they are just unaware. In either case, accusing them of being threatening can work out badly for you. If they meant to be threatening, putting it out in the open like that can lead to violence. And if they didn’t mean to be threatening, putting it out in the open can lead to things like the other person getting upset and expecting you to comfort them, because they are so sad and hurt that you thought they might be abusive (which can be another form of emotional abuse, even if unintentional).
