It’s happening again. You’re meeting your friends for a group get-together, and surprise surprise, you’re the first one to arrive. You’ve accounted for traffic and parking issues and still managed to get there with 10 minutes to spare — but you seem to be the only one. Why does this always happen to you? You have your act together, so why can’t everyone else? If you’re a woman who’s chronically early for everything, you can probably identify with these struggles:
- You end up drinking more than you really want to. You keep on telling yourself that you want to be one of those women who never drink — or at least one of those women who don’t drink all the time. But you’re there all alone, and the waiter keeps shooting you these sad, sympathetic looks from across the room. Oh, what the hell. Go ahead and order something strong.
- You wonder if there’s something wrong with your watch. Like, seriously. You check your phone and make sure your watch didn’t randomly speed up or something. Nope.
- If you’re at a restaurant, you really want to start eating without everyone else. You’re hungry, and you thought 7:00 meant 7:00. If your friends can just dismiss social etiquette by being late, why can’t you just dismiss social etiquette by being in the middle of scarfing down dinner when they arrive?
- You make friends with the wait staff . That friendly waiter that is now bringing you drinks starts chatting with you. You try to be as engaging as possible to prove to her that you’re not some lonely weirdo but actually a really great person. It’s your friends that are the jerks.
- You place bets with yourself on how late your friends will be. If I win, I’ll buy another drink. If I lose, I’ll buy another drink.
- You end up lying to your friends about what time to be somewhere just so they’ll show up on time. You set the time for a half hour earlier than you actually want to get there. It’s pretty genius the first few times, until they figure it out, and then it just makes the problem even worse.
- You don’t admit how early you arrived because you don’t want your friends to feel bad. Oh no, it’s fine, I totally just got here a minute ago!
- You get mad at yourself for always doing this. You’re totally being too nice, and it’s sabotaging your happiness. You have GOT to start saying no more often. Or at least giving your friends death glares when they show up late.
- You spend quality time with your iPhone at the table or the bar. Then your friends show up and you’re like, actually, all I want to do right now is finish this game of 2048.
- All you want in life is to go to bed at a reasonable hour. If everyone would just show up on time, you could all leave on time. That means you could sleep, which in turn means you’ll be a much happier, nicer person. Is that really so hard?
