AITA for lying to my boyfriend about when an event starts?

A Redditor recently shared a story about lying to her boyfriend to get him to be on time for a family gathering. Her boyfriend struggles with time management and is often late, which frustrates her since she values punctuality.

In an attempt to prevent another late arrival, she told him the event started an hour earlier than it actually did. While the plan worked, the boyfriend later discovered the lie and became upset, raising concerns about trust.

The Redditor wonders if her actions were justified or if she was wrong for lying. To read the full story and see the reactions from the Reddit community, check out the original post below.

‘ AITA for lying to my boyfriend about when an event starts?’

So this didn’t happen recently, but it was brought up last night and my boyfriend seemed to get really mad about it, so I figured I would bring it to the group to see if I’m the a**hole or not.

My boyfriend has terrible time management skills and is late for everything. I absolutely hate it because I am the kind of person that believes if you’re not 10 minutes early, you’re late.

For an example, we were invited to a family lunch a few years ago. Everyone was meeting at a restaurant at 11:00am. We live 10 minutes from said restaurant and my boyfriend waited until 10:55 before getting in the shower or attempting getting ready. We were an hour late meeting the family, who was already well into the meal when we arrived.

A few months went by and another family gathering invite was sent out, with a ‘start time’ of 1:00pm. Knowing that he is terrible at getting ready and leaving on time, I told my boyfriend that the event started at Noon, not 1:00.

And just as I figured at just before noon, my boyfriend started to get ready. We show up at 1:00, him thinking we’re now an hour late, only to find out that everyone else is just getting there too.

So last night we got to discussing things and it got brought up how I had lied about what time the event started. I know it’s a s**tty thing to lie and he pointed out, if I can lie about something like that, whose to say what else I’d be lying about.

I told him he was right to feel like that, but reminded him that I don’t have locks on my phone and he knows the passwords/pin numbers to all my accounts so he’s more than welcome to check and see if I’m ‘hiding something’.

I explained that I only did it because he has terrible time management skills and can’t seem to be anywhere on time. In my opinion, being repeatedly late to things is rude and it’s a terrible skill to be teaching his children.

He doesn’t have any kind of problems with his family, so there is no reason that he would want to limit his time with them and it’s not like these gatherings are boring/unfun events (the one I lied about the start time was actually a family paintball game, which we love to play).

I’ve learned my lesson and don’t plan on doing it again in the future, but I just have to know if I’m the a**hole for lying to try and get him to be on time for something that is important to me.

Edit: So I posted this before I left for work when there was only a handful of comments and wasnt able to check it all day. I certainly didn’t expect it to get this much attention, let alone 20,000 upvotes.

Though I haven’t yet gotten a chance to read through or reply to any messages or comments yet, I’d like to thank everyone for their judgements. Whether you think I’m an a**hole or not, you took time out of your life to try to explain your point of view of the situation and I appreciate that.

Let’s dive into the reactions from Reddit:

hellopanic −  NTA. He’s being extremely rude and inconsiderate of your time, and everyone else’s. In the future I would recommend leaving without him. Tell him: “It starts at 1pm, I’m leaving the house at 12:45pm (or whenever) and I would love it if you were ready and came with me.

But if you’re not ready I am going on my own and will see you there.”
A few instances where he has to take a taxi while you’ve left in the car and he might start to improve his behaviour.

dirtymac153 −  NTA.I can’t stand people who don’t respect other people’s time.. It’s just plain selfish

KaDo1014 −  NTA, the fact that he jumped to accusations of you hiding more things because you didnt want his bad habits to ruin a family gather makes him an a**hole. If he was just salty I’d say no assholes here but all you did was give him a chance to not be late.. Sorry for my grammar if its bad.

MaximumBrights −  NTA. He was an hour “late”. AS predicted. He needs to address his lateness before you agree not to lie again, to be honest. He’s trying to squirm out of his own responsibility by overreacting.

yohaneh −  NTA, but you should make it clear to him that his behaviour is making you feel like s**t and you did it to save your own feelings. He’s TA for constantly making you late, but if you don’t fix this in your relationship it’s going to get worse.

OriginalIronDan −  This is exactly what my second wife was like. I had to tell her to be ready at least an hour early; two hours if we had a flight somewhere. This is a control issue. Nobody is going to tell him what to do.

Another thing the wife did was when she got a new job, she’d be on time for the first week but never again, even if she was told she’d be fired if she was late. I introduced her to people as “my late wife” for several years before she actually died. Ironically, that’s the only thing she ever did early.

Edit: This is a true story. She became addicted to pills, and one day I came home to be told by my 11 year old that he’d been taking care of the 3 year old. Feeding, potty training, the whole 9 yards. I gave her an ultimatum: the pills or the family, since she obviously couldn’t handle both.

The next morning, I woke up and after I went to the bathroom, walked out into the living room, which was very warm. Sliders were open leading to the porch, and her pills (heavy-duty opioids, muscle relaxers, and Xanax) all out of their bottles and spread out all over the table. She constantly obsessively counted them. “Making sure that nobody was stealing them.”

Never mind the fact that I didn’t like opioids, and the only other people in the house were the kids. I assumed she was in the bathroom, and as I walked towards the other bathroom, I heard a noise in the kitchen.

She was passed out snoring on the kitchen floor. I put her on the couch, put her pills in their bottles, and put the dosages for the two times she was scheduled to take them while I was at work in one of those seven day pill keepers.

When I left for work at 11:30, I told her where the first dose was hidden. At 6 o’clock, I called and told her where the second dose was hidden. I came home and told her that I was done. She wasn’t the woman that I married, and that woman would be disgusted by her. For the next month, I handled her medication for her.

The kids and I were moving into another house, and she wasn’t coming with us, so Labor Day weekend of 2009 she took all of her stuff that she could carry and left. Obviously, I had to give her her pills.

That was Friday; on Monday I got a call from the cops saying to come pick her up. She was in a convenience store, obviously having taken too many of the pills. . I went to where she was, asked them if they could Baker Act her, and they said she didn’t fit the criteria. I drove her to a mental health/rehab facility nearby our house and she refused to go in.

She took her stuff and walked down the driveway, and that’s the last anyone saw her alive. The medical examiner and I figure that she went next door to the construction site where they were building a children’s center, and took a bunch of pills so she could “wake up without being in pain“. Obviously, she’d been taking a lot of pills over the weekend.

They found her body there two days later, and pronounced her dead at 9 o’clock am on 9/9/09. I’d link this to the news story if I could find it, and it wouldn’t dox myself. She had a warped sense of humor, and thought the “late wife” was pretty funny. Sadly, I’d been telling her for years that the drugs would kill her.

At least neither the kids nor I found her, or even saw her body. She’d been dead for at least 24 hours when they found her, outdoors, in Florida. I don’t know if anybody’s going to believe the story or not, but I’m more worried about if they see a parallel in their own life, if they can get somebody the help they obviously desperately need.

I tried, but it just didn’t work. I even called Department of Children and Families on ourselves, just so she’d have to face up to the fact that she had issues that prevented her from being a good parent, and she wouldn’t end up with custody. Bear in mind that one of the three kids I took with me when I moved out was her son, who I adopted. I’m not his father.

Malikissa −  NTA – Being consistently late is childish and rude. It sends a message to the person/people you are meeting that they aren’t worth your time. If he doesn’t want you to lie about the start times, I would just leave without him.

jakehasapulsebomb −  NTA. It worked and he’s TA for making family members wait for so long. This is a white lie, like when you say Father Christmas exists, and it worked without causing harm.

chickenbiscuit4life −  NTA- why the f**k does he need passwords to all your accounts. Wtf.

OuchLOLcom −  I had the exact same situation with my ex. Youre going to get different answers based on peoples value systems. Im like you and think its super rude to be late to places, and if I need to tell your dumb ass the wrong time to make sure I dont look bad then Im going to do it.

Others think even little white lies are the worst thing ever and will call you the a**hole. How they can be so adamant about you ‘lieing’ but not care to respect people’s time and schedule is beyond me but here we both are.

Do you think the Redditor’s decision to lie was justified to address her boyfriend’s chronic lateness, or was it too manipulative and breached trust? How would you handle time management issues in a relationship? Share your thoughts below!