I Boarded a Plane and Left My Wife Behind for Being Late

Any marriage or romantic relationship comes with its own hurdles, including arguments and disagreements. anguy1284, a Reddit user, found himself in a dispute with his wife after he left her behind at the airport due to her poor time management. The argument led to the user asking for help from Reddit to determine whether he had been wrong in abandoning his wife.

The Redditor wrote: “My wife (female, 43) and I (male, 47) have a daughter (female, 21) who goes to college out of state. We will call my wife Meg and my daughter Jess. Jess is in her junior year of college. We usually go to visit Jess a couple of times throughout the semester.

Let me start by saying that traveling with my wife is not a great experience. I am very type A, I like to have everything organized and make sure that we get where we need to be early, especially when traveling. My wife is the opposite, very ‘go with the flow’ and ‘we will get there when we get there.’ I do my best to meet in the middle, but not when traveling by plane.”

“Last year, during parents’ weekend Meg and I were going to fly out to see Jess. Our flight was at 10 am. I told my wife that we needed to be at the airport 90 minutes early, and we live about 30 minutes from the airport. This being said I wanted to leave at the very latest by 8. I of course got up at 6, to make sure everything was ready and accounted for.

My wife does not like to get up early. It took me attempting to wake her up 5 times before she eventually got up at 7:40. We didn’t leave the house until 9. It ended up being busier at the airport than normal, and it took so long to get through security that we missed our flight.”

“Fast-forward to now. We take one flight from our town to a bigger town nearby, then fly from there to my daughter’s college town. Again it was a long morning of me pushing my wife getting her to move along. Due to the last airport mishap I wanted to make sure I told her we needed to leave extra early as to not miss the flight again.

We got there on time, with a bit of time to spare. We took our first flight and landed in the connecting city, at a much larger airport. We only had about 1 hour layover. We got off the plane at 9:15 and our next plane started boarding at 9:40. We had to take multiple rails to get from where we landed to our terminal. We got to our terminal and had about 15 minutes until our plane was set to board.”

“My wife tells me that she wants to get coffee. There was a little market next to our terminal that sold hot food and coffee. I asked if she wanted me to go grab it for her. ‘No, I want Starbucks’ she said. Well Starbucks was a rail ride away, and a little bit of a walk.

I told her we couldn’t do that, we didn’t have enough time. She stated that we had enough time and if I wouldn’t go with her, she would go by herself. I tried to discourage her but she was determined. She walked away, at a brisk pace for her, and said she would be back in time.”

“15 minutes went by, and she was nowhere to be seen. They started calling boarding groups, I called my wife hoping she was nearby, she didn’t answer. They called a few groups, then called ours. In a panic I called my wife again, 3 times, finally on the last call she answered and said she was on her way, it was a long line, and she had to wait a bit. I told her they were almost done with boarding, and she needed to hurry up.

I waited by the gate, but the attendant said they would need to shut the gate in 2 minutes. I waited and waited, but she didn’t show up. The attendant asked if I wanted to board, otherwise she was closing the gate. I tried to plead with her to wait a couple of minutes, but she insisted that she couldn’t. So, I boarded the plane.”

“A few minutes later my wife calls me saying the attendant won’t let her on, they had already removed the boarding ramp at that point. She told me I needed to tell them to let me off the plane to be with her and I said no. It is not fair to do this again to Jess. I said, ‘I told you we didn’t have time, but you decided to go anyway.’ I told her to go purchase a new ticket for the next flight and I would see her when she arrives.

She got to Jess’s school and seemed unbothered by the whole situation, didn’t even really talk about it. I thought maybe she realized it was her fault and just wanted to drop it. Boy was I wrong. We are now home, and she hasn’t talked to me since the trip, over a week ago.”

Many people in the comments were on the Redditor’s side, with one comment saying: “You need to make a line in the sand. You are not responsible for waking her up. You are not responsible for getting her out the door. She’s an adult, and she can do what she wants.” Another comment also said: “Your wife is very selfish. Imagine missing time with your child because you thought coffee was more important?”

While relationships always come with their fair share of issues, sometimes these problems can be bigger than a simple argument, like this woman whose husband demands to know everything that happens in his wife’s day.