I (39m) have a wife Rachel (39f) and we have two kids who are 10 and 8.
Rachel and I are both business owners. I’m home 1-2 days weekly, working the other 2-3, and my wife goes to work 3-4 days a week. My wife eats lunch at the same time everyday, so usually I didn’t mind joining her if I didn’t have anything to do. I would just drive over and we would sit and talk for some time. Usually on the days that I am home.
The past few times I have kind of “forgotten” I guess to meet her. Mostly because I was just doing something else (watching TV, out of the house, etc). I don’t tell her because it’s not really a regular thing we have established. But Rachel has gotten kind of irritated with me over me “skipping” our lunches, but we have dinner and after the kids go to bed to talk.
She asked me why I missed lunch again a few days ago, and I told her that I really just didn’t feel like driving her job sometimes. It’s an inconvenience. Especially if we can just call. And it’s not even really a planned thing we both agreed to do regularly. She took offense to that though, because she thinks it’s “new” behavior. She didn’t talk to me for the rest of that night because I said i was feeling lazy s few times.
AITA? I feel like she’s forgetting I see her everyday. I don’t see my friends everyday, or get to just drive around and just explore the area everyday. And I obviously still go, just on a less consistent basis.
Wow. YTA. Your wife likes spending time with you. Don’t become complacent.
YTA for not telling her ahead of time. It’s fine if you don’t want to drive over to her work, but don’t “forget”. Be an adult and tell her when you’ll be eating lunch with her and when you won’t so she can make her own plans.
You just told your wife that spending time with her was an inconvenience. If you don’t realize how tone deaf that was your marriage may be in trouble.
Yeahhh…YTA. It seems like you established a routine that mattered to her, and you just abruptly stopped it. In a healthy marriage, couples must continue to date forever. Do you date her in other ways? Dates don’t have to be significant outings—grocery shopping, working lunches, and oil changes can be “dates” if you make them—but they have to matter.
YTA the way you phrased it made it sound like you don’t really like your wife! I totally understand not wanting to drive over every day off that you have. You should tell her you really want to spend time with her but you also want to get other things done and could we make it so that say every Tuesday you go lunch with her at work and every Friday she comes and lunches with you.
It sounds like she was waiting, which means you didn’t text her or anything. You just forgot. A few times. That’s super lazy. You don’t have to eat lunch with her all the time but if there is a reason for her to expect you, you need to change that expectation (in a nice way) before failing to show up. It sounds like you told your wife she’s bothering you… YTA
Seems like it was established since you had to “forget”
YTA
It’s okay to change your boundaries. That needs to be COMMUNICATED. She had to ask multiple times before you told her what you should have told before, if not when, you upruptly stopped meeting for lunch.
Instead you left her feeling stood up, abandoned and confused. YTA
YTA for “forgetting”.
If you don’t want to do it every time, pick specific days so you know when you are forced to do this horrible, horrible inconvenience of eating lunch with her, and you can plan around it.
Why would you not just proactively communicate these feelings to her?
Edit: oh, and yea YTA
“I don’t see my friends everyday”
No shit. You didn’t marry your friends. You married your wife.
The literal least you could have done is to tell her that you’d rather watch tv than see her so she knew the plan.
Why are you being mean to your wife?
YTA for not communicating. You say it’s not an expectation, but it sounds like it is. It’s okay to not want to go, but you could let her know instead of basically standing her up.
>The past few times I have kind of “forgotten” I guess to meet her
this tells us more than you realize. YTA