There are two kinds of people in this world: people who get to the airport four hours early and breeze through security, and people who show up 20 minutes before boarding, sprinting to the gate with one shoe on. This is a story about what happens when those two people get married. And in this case, one of them is trying to sabotage their own honeymoon.
Our narrator, a 31-year-old woman, is about to go on her first trip to Japan with her 32-year-old husband. It’s their honeymoon and first-anniversary trip all in one. A huge, exciting, expensive vacation. Their flight is at 11:30 AM from LAX.
She, being the sane, organized, and responsible half of this duo, wants to be at the airport by 7:30 AM. That’s four hours early. This is the correct answer for an international flight from one of the busiest, most chaotic airports on planet earth.
Her husband? He wants to be there at 9:30 AM. Two hours early. Two. Hours.
Now, his “reasoning” is that he has a crippling fear of flying. His anxiety is “very high.” And he claims that he “doesn’t want to end up waiting at the airport extra time” because the “anticipation will make his anxiety worse.”
I’m sorry, what? You’re anxious about flying… so your solution is to add the heart-stopping, adrenaline-pumping panic of missing the flight to the mix? How, in any world, is “sprinting to the gate” less anxiety-inducing than “sitting at the gate with a coffee for 90 minutes”?
The wife, our hero, is also anxious. But she’s anxious about real things. Like missing their non-refundable, year-in-the-planning honeymoon flight. They live 1.5 hours away from LAX, and that’s without traffic. To get there by 9:30, they’d have to leave at 8:00 AM. During Los Angeles rush hour. On a day with a stormy weather forecast. This is not a “plan”; it’s a “suicide mission.”
And here is the part that truly sends me into orbit. This man, this ball of “anxiety,” has done nothing to plan this trip. By his own choice. She says, “I have planned this entire trip myself with very little input from him.” She researched, she bought the tickets, she booked the hotels, she planned the excursions, she arranged the rides.
This woman has single-handedly built their entire honeymoon from scratch. And he, having contributed zero labor, has the audacity to try and veto her logistics and call her “selfish” for it.
He called her the “selfish (an a**hole?)” one. For wanting to… checks notes… eat breakfast, get through security without having a panic attack, and successfully get on the plane she paid for. The sheer, unmitigated gall.
Let’s be very clear. “I have anxiety” is not a get-out-of-jail-free card. It is not a weapon you get to use to make everyone else’s life harder. His anxiety is valid, but her anxiety about LA traffic, stormy weather, “government shutdown chaos,” and missing her own honeymoon is also valid. And in this battle, the anxiety that is based on logic and facts is the one that wins.
So, is she the a**hole? Absolutely not. N-T-A. She is the only reason they are going to Japan at all. He is not “anxious”; he is a 32-year-old man-baby who is throwing a tantrum because his wife is being the responsible adult. If he’s going to be anxious anyway, he can be anxious at the airport bar, not in gridlock traffic on the 405.