What Woman Did When Husband Was Late for Her Birthday Dinner Applauded

A woman has found support online after she left her tardy husband behind to arrive in time for her birthday dinner reservation.

The viral Reddit post, titled "AITA for going to my birthday dinner without my husband when he wasn't ready on time?" gained 9,500 upvotes in the 24 hours after it was posted, giving Reddit user u/AcanthaceaeWilling69 plenty of evidence that many people think she did the right thing.

The Redditor said in her post that she had made a reservation for her 40th birthday celebration and wanted to leave with plenty of time in hand to account for traffic. Her husband, who she wrote has a habit of running late, was lax in sticking to her schedule.

Woman leaves apartment while man watches TV
A woman walks away from her partner watching television. A viral Reddit post is discussing a woman's decision to attend her birthday dinner without her tardy husband. Tero Vesalainen/iStock/Getty Images

"My husband (43 M) had decided to do a bit of work on his car about half an hour before we needed to leave. At 6:30 when the kids and I were waiting by the door, he was still doing it," she wrote. "He hadn't changed and hadn't showered ... it got to 6:50 and he still wasn't ready yet so I decided to just leave without him."

She made it to the restaurant as planned, but her husband never showed up.

"When we got home he was mad at me. 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," she said.

Other Redditors flooded the comments with support, reassuring the woman that she was not in the wrong and that if she had indulged her husband's lateness, she wouldn't have had a birthday celebration at all.

"NTA. You were already late when you left. If you waited any longer, you wouldn't have a table," u/extinct_diplodocus wrote. "When you got home, you should have torn him a new one for deliberately trying to sabotage your birthday party. Put him on the defensive, where he should be, for his behavior."

Some users had follow-up questions: Was her husband also late for things that he wanted to do or were important to his social life?

"He is always out the house on time for work," u/AcanthaceaeWilling69 wrote. "Yesterday, he went to the pub with some friends and wasn't late for that. He tends to only be late for things including the family."

She said the birthday celebration had been in his diary for weeks - and that she had been looking forward to it for the same amount of time.

"Why tf is his wife's birthday celebration NOT important to him? That's what I'd like to know. She should've left at 6:30 on the dot. He's horrible," u/madpeachpie wrote.

Still, the Redditor said that in the end, she had a "lovely time". Her overwhelming support from the Reddit community may make her feel that she deserved it, too.

Have you noticed any red flags that made you end a relationship? Let us know via life@newsweek.com. We can ask experts for advice, and your story could be featured on Newsweek.

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