A certain Rebbe would advise young married men to always add a half hour or more to the time they plan to come home in the evening. He suggested that if, for example, you leave the office at five and the journey home takes an hour, tell your wife that you get home at around seven. Sometimes traffic will be light and you’ll get home early and your wife will be delighted. Sometimes you’ll chat with a friend after work and still make it home by seven and your wife won’t get upset.
In your case, if you know that you plan to leave the house at six for a chasunah, you might be better off telling your husband you’d like to leave at six-thirty, or even seven. Yes, if you leave the house at seven you might be late, but you probably would have been late anyway... and this way, at least you’ll have a pleasant ride to the hall. Another example of this strategy would be, if you’re asking your husband to pick you up from somewhere, saying, “I’ll call you ten minutes before I’m ready.” That way, he won’t be hanging around waiting for you and getting nervous all the while.
And for the husbands out there, you can also suggest similar ideas, or even create a special project, such as a shiur you listen to or a sefer you can pull out, or just some flexible work-related catching up to do, for the stressful minutes (or half hours) of waiting for your spouse. Being creative will probably help you to feel less frustrated with the time wasted and even the perceived inconsideration.
I would also like to stress that your husband is already acting in a very commendable way by agreeing to drive you around to wherever you need to go. While it is customary in many chassidishe communities that only the husband drives, that doesn’t mean that he automatically signed up to be his wife’s personal chauffeur. If he feels that you don’t appreciate him for the time he spends driving you, then that’s likely to contribute to his frustration every time he has to wait for you.
While I don’t think it would be acceptable for your husband to tell you that if you’re late, you’ll have to stay home, it’s important to realize that he’s saying something else entirely. He doesn’t seem to have a problem with you taking a taxi instead, despite the expense. Certainly, it’s more pleasant to travel to a chasunah together and not take a taxi and arrive half an hour after him. However, from your husband’s perspective, it’s more pleasant to leave the house on time with his wife and arrive on time at the chasunah. Remember, we see things differently and we’re all entitled to our viewpoints.
This issue, as with so many, is far easier to solve when we take a step back and look at the whole picture. Relationships might be simpler and smoother when both parties have similar temperaments, but in practice, virtually every marriage has areas where the spouses clash. As I mentioned earlier, these areas shouldn’t be seen as signs that something is wrong, but rather as opportunities to grow closer and make the relationship stronger.
Looking at the whole picture also means seeing all the positive aspects in one’s spouse and realizing that this one sticky issue is quite insignificant in the scheme of things. It’s natural and easy to get stuck on the things we don’t like, but so important to stop for a moment and “unstick” oneself.
You write that you have been married for over twenty years and that you have wonderful shalom bayis. Being grateful for what you have will go a long way toward enabling you to willingly look for and implement a way to get past this one tricky issue. I hope you both share many more happy and healthy years together, and that neither of you will ever have to experience going to a simchah alone. I hope that you will never need to come to the realization that patiently waiting for a spouse, or hurrying up your spouse, for that matter, is better than having the liberty of going when it’s easiest for you — by yourself.
Appreciate what you have — appreciate the good and also the challenges that give you the opportunity to make things even better.
