Time is a precious commodity.
With each passing year, it’s hard to appreciate just how quickly time passes.
With that in mind, many people don’t like to waste a moment and savor every minute they have on earth.
That being said, people have very different ideas of what constitutes “making the most of their time”.
Redditor FewIncrease2878 recently needed to pick something up from a store.
Wanting to make this a quick errand, the original poster (OP) decided not to wake their girlfriend up and ask if she wanted to join them.
A decision that the OP’s girlfriend felt was “selfish”.
Wondering if this was the case, the OP took to the subReddit “Am I The A**hole” (AITA), where they asked fellow Redditors:
“AITA for not taking my girlfriend shopping with me because she likes to visit every store?”
The OP explained why they made the conscious decision to exclude their girlfriend from a recent shopping trip:
“Hi, needed an unbiased opinion.”
“Whenever we go to the mall or even grocery shopping, even if we know what it is we need to buy and where we’ll buy it from, my girlfriend still wants to check out every store.”
“Like we’ll be supposed to buy a rug from the rug store and on the way will also go to Zara’s and Michael Kors and random other stores just because ‘let’s check it out’.”
“I put up a bit of resistance but she’ll always say it’ll just be a minute so I relent, but those minutes add up.”
“On Monday I was going to get shoes for myself.”
“We’d gone there previously, they didn’t have my size, and I got a text that it was in stock now.”
“My girlfriend was taking a nap.”
“If I’m being honest I knew she’d be down to go even if she was napping, but I also wanted to just get the shoes and come back so I went by myself.”
“Later when she asked why I didn’t just wake her up she knew I would’ve liked to come along and check it out, I said its because I wanted to get done with it ASAP.”
“She asked so what we could’ve gotten it done with quickly, I just casually said that she likes taking her time going to every store, and I kind of wanted to get this done with ASAP.”
“I should’ve probably stuck to the lie that I just didn’t want to wake her up, I regret it now.”
“She got offended and said she’s not incapable of planning, that it was rude.”
“I apologized in the moment, she accepted it but still said she felt infantilized.”
“I didn’t push it and we went past it.”
“I thought Id ask here whether I was TA for what I did?”
Fellow Redditors weighed in on where they believed the OP fell in this particular situation, by declaring:
- NTA – Not The A**hole
- YTA – You’re The A**hole
- NAH – No A**holes Here
- ESH – Everyone Sucks Here
The Reddit community firmly agreed that the OP was not the a**hole for picking up their shoes without bringing their girlfriend along:
Everyone agreed that as the OP simply wanted to run a quick errand, they were under no obligation to bring their girlfriend along, with some pointing out she might have been equally annoyed to have been woken from her nap, and others urging the OP to consider how healthy this relationship was:
“NTA.”
“You had an errand to run and didn’t want it to turn into a lengthy ‘mall crawl’.”
“That sounds totally fair to me.”
“Some people like browsing randomly, some don’t.”
“You’re not obligated to take her with you on a specific task that would have turned into something totally different with her there.”- kathryn_sedai
“‘I just casually said that she likes taking her time going to every store, and I kind of wanted to get this done with ASAP.'”
“‘She got offended and said shes not incapable of planning, that it was rude. I apologized in the moment, she accepted it but still said she felt infantilized. I didn’t push it, and we went past it.'”
“Were you rude?”
“No.”
“Are you the a**hole?”
“NTA.”
“Can I see your relationship lasting if your girlfriend is that touchy about reasonable and politely expressed criticism, and you’ll end up needing to lie to her instead?”
“Noooooo.”- ThisWillAgeWell
“In the words of my father, anytime we went to a store.”
“‘We are not here to shop. We are here to conquer.”
“You went to the store to conquer.”
“She likes to shop.”
“NTA.”- 05730
“NTA but like, sneaking out during naps and lying about it isn’t really a sustainable solution to this problem.”
“Like, you should be able to go do an errand together without making many stops.”
“But she also isn’t like, wrong to want to have fun and check out shops when she’s shopping, either.”
“What has she said when you have talked to her about your varying expectations?”- Imnotawerewolf
“NTA.”
“Your shopping styles are incompatible.”
“She likes to browse and might even see it as a date.”
“The cat is out of the bag so you might as well arrange for some shopping dates.”
“My husband is like that but only about Costco.”
“Costco is always a date.”
“I should write a romance novel about Costco.”- lavasca
“NTA.”
“You didn’t say she’s incapable of planning.”
“She chose to hear that.”
“I see no reason to apologize to her.”
“You’re allowed to go on a solo store run.”- erinkca
“NTA.”
“As a woman, there are leisurely trips in which I haunt stores and wonder aimlessly, and other times I am ‘on a mission from God’, (a la The Blues Brothers) and I get in and get out.”
“Just adding a second person can change the whole dynamic and can be frustrating if you are on differing mind-sets about the trip.”- 2dogslife
“NTA.”
“You wanted to go get it done, not go on a long shopping spree.”
“Even if it would be a window shopping spree.”
“You’re allowed to just do a task by yourself quickly sometimes.”
“That said, it sounds like you and your girlfriend should have a real conversation about this sometime.”
“It sounds like she wants to go shopping often because she finds it fun.”
“Not a chore or a task to get done.”
“Whereas, from how you talk, it sounds like you find it a chore or task to get done, and not fun.”
“Meaning, there has to be a point where she accepts that for you, shopping is a chore, and you need to accept for her, shopping is fun.”
“And then when doing shopping trips you both need to agree if it’s a fun shop or a task shop, and be willing to stick to that.”
“Maybe for task shops you go alone, or separately, or she goes with you and agrees she’ll stick to the list.”
“And for fun shops, you go with the expectation it’s for fun, more leisurely, and she gets to enjoy looking around at things.”
“And maybe there’s something you can do yourself to make it more fun for you.”
“Or so you can make it about enjoying time with her while you’re both out.”
“The above are suggestions.”
“What is important is you both learn to understand each other and how to work through what shopping means to you and her, and how to communicate what you both want, be honest about given shopping trips, and learn how to coexist with your different styles of shopping in a way you can both be happy.”- fffangold
“NTA.”
“Couples don’t need to do everything together.”- meekonesfade
“NTA.”
“It’s perfectly okay to want to do something by yourself even if you’re in a relationship.”
“Hell, I’m married with 2 kids and I love being able to go to the store alone sometimes!”
“Yes, the kids would love to come along, but it’s always such a production with them in tow; it takes 3 times as long.”
“Kind of like with your girlfriend, lol.”- floki_129
“NTA.”
“And the argument is not that serious for her to say she feels infantilized.”
“You’re not a fan of shopping like her, so you both should go by yourselves or drive different cars.”
“I hate shopping and would be annoyed if someone wanted to keep going into every single store to not buy anything and just to look.”- Sunmoon98
“NTA.”
“I’ve been married for over 15 years.”
“Early on, my then GF, now wife, realized we had incompatible shopping styles.”
“I like to get in and out quickly, and I generally do not enjoy the shopping experience.”
“She likes to browse and take her time weighing options.”
“We stopped doing routine shopping together long ago.”
“We only shop together when we are deciding on a specific item at the point of purchase.”
“Home improvement stuff, cars, and other big ticket things we still do together.”
“Groceries and clothes…hell no.”
“We do that solo, and we are both much happier for it.”- FewStill3958
It’s never a good feeling to be excluded.
And perhaps the OP was right, in that their girlfriend’s anger could have likely been avoided had they just said they didn’t want to wake her up.
Even so, if this is how she reacted, perhaps the OP should consider what many members of the Reddit community said, and seriously consider how healthy this relationship is.