“My Friend’s Lateness Triggers My Anxiety Disorder”
This issue came to a head recently when we arranged to meet at a café. Once again, Sarah arrived approximately 30 minutes late. Initially, the explanation was vague (“there was a thing”), followed by traffic. However, I later realized she had sent me a text at the exact time we were meant to meet, indicating she was only then leaving the house. She eventually explained that she had been delayed because she was sending a text message that was not time-sensitive and could have been sent at any point during the week. What has been particularly difficult for me to process is the sense that a non-urgent task was prioritized over our agreed meeting time. I would not make the same choice, and it has left me feeling that I may value the friendship more than she does.
I have noticed that Sarah is generally punctual when we meet without our children present, but my patience is wearing thin. The ongoing unpredictability is causing me considerable stress; in fact, days before our most recent meeting I found myself anxious, anticipating that she would be late and worried about how I would react. Although we agreed that she would text me when she leaves the house in the future, I am concerned that this still places the burden on me to wait.
At this point, I am unsure how best to proceed. I am questioning whether it would be healthier to limit our catch-ups to times when we meet without the children, or whether I need to reconsider the friendship altogether. Sarah often has a high level of ongoing stress and drama in her life, and I am increasingly finding the relationship emotionally exhausting. I feel like I need an unbiased view on this! — Triggered By Her Tardiness
Feeling frustrated by a friend’s ongoing lateness is understandable. Always being tardy can show a lack of regard and respect for someone else’s time, and it sounds as though you’re perceiving that as Sarah’s lack of regard for your friendship. You could ask Sarah where you stand with her these days to get a sense of how she values your friendship. You could say to her that her lateness makes you feel as though you aren’t very important to her and ask whether that’s true.
You could also approach the lateness strategically. If the lateness happens most frequently when your 14-year-olds are included, you could meet up only without the kids. You could start giving Sarah an earlier start time than your reservations or the time you plan to show up. You could show up 20 or 30 minutes late yourself to limit the amount of time you have to wait for her. But it doesn’t sound as though you’ve tried these tactics, and I suspect that’s because you’ve already emotionally begun moving on from this friendship.
You say that Sarah often has a high level of ongoing stress and drama in her life and you are finding the relationship increasingly exhausting. Maybe your perception that Sarah no longer values the friendship gives you a path out that relieves you of any guilt you might feel dumping a friend with so much drama. But you don’t need an excuse. It’s perfectly reasonable and healthy for people to re-evaluate friendships that feel more draining than uplifting and to change the way they approach them (like seeing each other less frequently and reducing communication). What’s not normal and healthy is spending days feeling anxious about meeting with a friend because you suspect she’ll be late again.
The kind of anxiety you’re describing is pathological, as you know. If you feel as though your anxiety feels less managed lately or you’re more easily triggered, your anxiety disorder may need more attention or different treatment. As someone close to your age, I’m familiar with the mental and physical effects so many of us experience as our hormones dramatically shift. Sometimes those shifts exacerbate pre-existing issues, like anxiety disorders. Sometimes they make us feel less able to, well, deal with people’s bullshit. You might benefit from talking with a healthcare provider about your symptoms and the ways they might be addressed.
Finally, since Sarah’s and your 14-year-old kids have a strong friendship, I want to urge you to protect it by dealing with Sarah in a non-combative, healthy way. Don’t ghost her, don’t unload on her, don’t center your own grievances which are not all Sarah’s fault. Friendships often evolve as our own needs, availability, and priorities shift. You are in a place right now where your emotional availability and needs don’t seem to align with Sarah’s. Maybe you don’t have the capacity to deal with all her drama right now, and that’s OK. Maybe in time, you’ll feel better able to handle it and to enjoy, again, what you like about Sarah and your friendship. Or maybe this is a natural evolution point to permanently change the status of your relationship from close friends to casual acquaintances by slowly fading out. Maybe it’s time for this on-and-off friendship to be officially “off.” Sounds like your nervous system might agree.
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Or.. maybe you could learn more about adhd and realize it is actually a huge struggle for many people with adhd to manage time! That doesn’t mean they don’t value you!! It doesn’t make it okay for them to be perpetually late, but it also doesn’t mean it’s a personal indication they don’t prioritize your friendship.
They also struggle with prioritizing tasks in general, which could explain texting something “unnecessary”, as well as task completion or remembering to do tasks: perhaps this is why she chose to send the text when she did because she would forget completely once it was out of her mind if she did not do it right then.
Again, does not mean you have to accept her being late all the time.
I have a friend (and a husband, and a son) with adhd. With my friend who is perpetually late, I give her a time that is half an hour earlier than the time I actually want to meet, it works pretty well for the most part. Though she is sometimes still late, but much less so.
This! I was very surprised that Wendy’s response did not at all address the friend’s recent ADHD diagnosis. But maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised…. So many people don’t understand the condition and are dismissive of it. The LW might start a conversation with her friend by asking what steps she is taking to develop tools to deal with her ADHD: Meds? Executive Function coaching? Both? People with ADHD don’t want to alienate their friends by being late, missing meetings, etc. But they also DO need to take responsibility for developing tools to manage their ADHD related issues. LW should be kind, and empathetic, but direct. If she care about the friendship she will also be patient (once she has been direct with her friend).
Yes! A decades long friendship deserves some joint problem solving. It would really help for LW to learn a bit more about ADHD including common time management issues and the shame that is more common with late diagnosis.
If LW just doesn’t like her anymore, that’s different. But there’s no need to project about her friend’s feelings or catastrophize being late. It’s annoying, talk about it. Meditate. Prioritize friendship if it is indeed one you want.
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Fuck that
Just out-late her. If thirty minutes is her average amount of lateness, arrive an hour after the planned time so she has to wait for you for a change. It’ll be fun!
Wouldn’t it be funny if Sarah got tired of waiting and started showing up even later?😂
Yeah Adhd, stress, drama, kids and all that. Same here and around the world. Is Sarah constantly late for work? Are the kids late for school? Is she being charged for missing appointment times? Most people generally find a way to prioritize what is important to them and maybe your casual catchups just aren’t that high on the list. And that’s okay! Accept that and set boundaries for your interactions with her. Don’t depend on that text when she’s leaving because she’s already lied to you before. Bring something to busy yourself with, set a maximum amount of time that you’ll wait, or just FaceTime/call her once in a while if she can’t get it together. She’ll just have to understand that you will not continue to subject yourself to the unnecessary stress and if she cares about you she’ll either at the very least respect that or at best, do better. Meeting with friends is supposed to bring you joy, not wrack your mental health.
S/n: Are either of you seeking professional help for your issues?
I can’t speak for Sarah, but as someone with only recently diagnosed ADHD, yes I’ve been regularly late for work and school, I’ve been charged for many missed appointments, I’ve missed flights and had to pay for new tickets, I’ve missed opportunities and events that are important to me and beat myself up about it for weeks afterwards, and I’ve pissed off a lot of people I care about by being late. It’s affected every part of my life, which is one of the reasons my condition is disabling. And I’ve tried so, so much of the advice that’s typically offered around time management and it doesn’t work for me because my brain just works differently. And there’s very little advice out there to actually address the ways time blindness, working memory issues and distractibility work together to make keeping appointments incredibly difficult, in part because a lot of advice starts from the assumption that if it’s important to you you’ll just be on time. That’s not the case for me. I can certainly see how if someone can consistently be on time to everything important in their life, then when they’re always late to meet you it might show that you’re not a priority to them. But there are people out there who do consistently struggle with this in all parts of our lives, and shame usually only makes it worse.
I am surprised that people didn’t recommend just leaving after 10 minutes or 15 minutes and telling Sarah that in advance. I am not dismissive of ADHD at all but I also would not wait for anyone past 15 minutes.
The other piece of this is the fact that the LW mentions her anxiety, mentions her perception that Sarah’s texts were not time sensitive, and expresses a general tone of mentally micromanaging Sarah. Anxious people tend to try to control their environments in order to try to feel ok. This is a losing proposition. Stop trying to control Sarah, even mentally. Stop trying to determine why she was late, what her priorities “should” be, or whether the reason she was late was significant enough for you to feel ok with it. You, LW, do not feel ok. My guess is you tend to micromanage people. I’ve also noticed people with unmanaged or poorly managed anxiety for some reason form friendships and relationships with people like Sarah because it gives them something outside of their own selves to direct their anxiety at, which is utterly unfair. Your mental illnesses are incompatible right now, but being an anxious micromanager is incompatible with many more things than being an ADHDer who is late.
I had a friend who was always late, not from ADHD, but from a desire to fill up every moment with activity.
Once she calculated that she would be 10 minutes early to our appointment, so to fill that 10 minutes, she went to the gym (!), and ended up an hour late for our appointment.
I solved that problem by only getting together with her at my home. When I was at home, I didn’t really care when she arrived because I just continued doing what I was doing until she showed up. It wasn’t like sitting alone at a restaurant, or missing the beginning of a movie because I was waiting for her to arrive.
Joan…your friend is not a striped horse. She is a zebra. Meaning just because she hasn’t been diagnosed ADHD (or hasn’t shared it) doesn’t mean she isn’t ADHD. That sounds pretty textbook. I’m so impressed how you found a way to let her figure herself out, let yourself enjoy your day, and maintained your friendship. You’re a gem.
My best friend is chronically late. Nearly every time. She simply cannot help it. But instead of getting annoyed, I just build it into our outings and avoid plans with her where there is a hard Start Time. I also avoid riding to her to the airport even when we’re traveling together because in that situation, her lateness would stress me out!
So, if we have plans and I need to finish up something and can’t leave until 15 minutes after I should to get there on time – no worries and no stress. And if I need a break or some me time, I am happy to arrive on time (“early”) for our planned dinner or drinks and order myself a cocktail and enjoy a few minutes to enjoy alone time reading or people watching.
Some people are just late. They will never change. Not fully. So the choice is to either accept it and roll with it or stop doing stuff with them outside your or their home.