AITAH I met up with my boyfriend to unload a TV I’m gifting him and he says I’m too literal.
We live in the same apartment complex and he stayed the night at mine and we slept in Sunday morning. He was running late to get on the road for a family event, so he said “let me go shower at my place, I’ll be about 10 minutes, you pull the car up with the TV”. (A TV I’m re-gifting to him that I’ve had in my car for 3 days that needs two people to take it up a couple flights of stairs).
He is usually running late so I rolled up to his building about 15- 20 minutes later and sat in my car air conditioning with a book. After 30 minutes pass I playfully texted “hey, what does 10 minutes mean in your world? Got an ETA?”
He says “I’m getting in my car”. Now I’m annoyed because I’m parked near his car and he’s 100% not getting in it. And furthermore, is he just going to hit the road?? Is he going to help me with this tv or not? I reminded him I’ve been sitting here with the tv waiting for him like we planned. It set him off. He says “why didn’t you TELL ME?”. He thinks I should have texted “here” AND that I took his verbal “pull up, I’ll be 10 mins” too literally.
I feel like there’s no need for me to communicate “here” when we agreed on a plan verbally. In my mind, he deviated from that plan and owed me a heads up. Like hey actually I won’t have time to deal with the TV today, sorry. Or “hey I’m headed down, where are you parked?”
Anyway, are we both just bad at communication or AITAH?
* editing to say
- We live in the same apartment complex so closely that we share a parking lot. I was driving this tv to the other side of the lot to get closer to his stairwell.
- Yes he has autism (and time blindness).
- I have ADD. So when I talk about our two worlds, we have very different perceptions of what is “common sense”.
- What I’m hearing from you guys is that it’s not the sparse communication and time blindness that’s the issue though, it’s the reaction and how conflict/ repair is handled.