I have to admit, I would be going nuts if Richard was 2 1/2 hours late home and I didn't know why he was late. It's not just the concern of "oh, he's gone to see another sweetie and he's late, they must be Up to No Good", it's the "oh, he's gone to see another sweetie and he's late - Something Must Have Happened on the way back". Seeing it as solely a mono/poly issue would be missing the broader picture.
I am the sort of person who worries about people being late if they're 10 minutes late, whereas he only starts to worry about someone being late if they're a couple of hours late. Also, my imagination is much wilder than his, so I'm much more inclined to think up Terrible Things That Must Have Happened. How late someone is before the other person starts worrying varies from person to person, and it also depends on things like the length of time that someone is gone for, and how accurate the ETA that they gave was. I know that if Richard is going to Maplin (an electronic parts shop) and says he'll be 15 minutes that he'll return an hour later looking sheepish and clutching a carrier bag far too big for the single resistor he was supposed to be buying. Whereas if he's going out to buy milk and says he'll be 15 minutes, I'll start worrying every minute that he's late.
Mobile phones help considerably. That wasn't the reason we got them initially, but that's what they've become. In a typical day when one of us is away from the other one, we'll talk 4-6 times a day, usually only for 30 seconds to 2 minutes. It helps that they're two-way - when he had a pager it was a nightmare because I would have no way of knowing he'd got the message until he found a payphone to call me. Now, if he's late and hasn't called (which is typical, because he hardly ever remembers), I can ring him to check that he's not actually dead in a ditch somewhere. This should be used with caution - a lot of people (usually men) get annoyed if their over-anxious spouses (usually women) ring them too many times to check where they are. But no one should get upset with a single call a sensible time after the ETA to check for non-deadness and get a new ETA. And if your partner is the worrying type, there's nothing worse than giving a new ETA and not sticking to it - or at least calling to say "sorry, got delayed again"!
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lateness and worrying
Date: 2002-09-05 05:20 pm (UTC)I am the sort of person who worries about people being late if they're 10 minutes late, whereas he only starts to worry about someone being late if they're a couple of hours late. Also, my imagination is much wilder than his, so I'm much more inclined to think up Terrible Things That Must Have Happened. How late someone is before the other person starts worrying varies from person to person, and it also depends on things like the length of time that someone is gone for, and how accurate the ETA that they gave was. I know that if Richard is going to Maplin (an electronic parts shop) and says he'll be 15 minutes that he'll return an hour later looking sheepish and clutching a carrier bag far too big for the single resistor he was supposed to be buying. Whereas if he's going out to buy milk and says he'll be 15 minutes, I'll start worrying every minute that he's late.
Mobile phones help considerably. That wasn't the reason we got them initially, but that's what they've become. In a typical day when one of us is away from the other one, we'll talk 4-6 times a day, usually only for 30 seconds to 2 minutes. It helps that they're two-way - when he had a pager it was a nightmare because I would have no way of knowing he'd got the message until he found a payphone to call me. Now, if he's late and hasn't called (which is typical, because he hardly ever remembers), I can ring him to check that he's not actually dead in a ditch somewhere. This should be used with caution - a lot of people (usually men) get annoyed if their over-anxious spouses (usually women) ring them too many times to check where they are. But no one should get upset with a single call a sensible time after the ETA to check for non-deadness and get a new ETA. And if your partner is the worrying type, there's nothing worse than giving a new ETA and not sticking to it - or at least calling to say "sorry, got delayed again"!