A 40-year-old woman on Reddit is sharing her experience where she was forced to have her birthday dinner without her husband because he was running late. "We had a reservation for a table at a nice restaurant for 7 p.m.," she wrote recently about her birthday plans. "It takes about 20 minutes to drive to the restaurant, so I planned to leave the house at 6:30 p.m. to build in time for traffic and picking up my father." She added that her husband, 43, "had decided to do a bit of work on his car about half an hour before we needed to leave." She continued, "At 6:30 when the kids and I were waiting by the door, he was still doing it. He hadn't changed and hadn't showered. I told him to quickly get ready, but it got to 6:50 and he still wasn't ready yet so I decided to just leave without him." She mentioned that her husband always has a habit of running late and being the last one ready. " Normally I can tolerate it since it only sets things back by ten minutes at the most, but my birthday dinner was important to me and I had been looking forward to it for weeks." The woman added that she called the restaurant while she was on the way that she was going to be late, and thankfully they didn't lose their table. However, her husband never showed up. When she arrived home, her husband was upset that she left him. "I told him that I was tired of him not respecting my time and always making people wait for him, and that he could have made his own way to the restaurant. My father agreed with my decision to leave without him, but my kids were a little upset that he wasn't there to have dinner with us."

Many Reddit users weighed in with their opinions, the majority of them being on her side. One user commented, "Tell him clearly that from now on, you are going to tell him when you plan to leave. And you don’t care what he’s doing at that point, because if he isn’t ready to leave you are leaving without him." Another user commented, "He knew what time was Go time and he chose to ignore it. By saying "yes" to car repairs, he chose to say "no" to your birthday dinner. He had the same information you had, and he prioritized what was important to him. You did the same."

Kathy Nickerson, a licensed clinical psychologist shared her thoughts on the situation with Fox News. "All behavior is a form of communication. When we choose not to get ready on time — especially for someone's birthday dinner — we are sending the message that they are not very important to us." She continued, "Being a couple of minutes late is typical; being an hour late is really hurtful. And leaving your wife to wonder if you'll ever get ready is profoundly hurtful." Nickerson emphasized that being late is all about communication. "I think it was appropriate that the wife left with the kids and went to the restaurant. Why should she miss out on celebrating her birthday because her husband chose not to get ready?" She also said, "Giving him the benefit of the doubt, perhaps he lost track of time, perhaps he was in the middle of a delicate procedure with the car. In either case, I would have encouraged him to communicate this, apologize for running late, ask for a reasonable compromise (e.g., ‘Can you call and see if the restaurant could seat us all in 30 minutes?’) and do his best to get to the birthday dinner as quickly as he could." Nickerson added, "It's reasonable and understandable that she was hurt and felt unimportant. I hope they can discuss this, he can apologize — and that they can learn and grow from this experience."