Time Blindness in Relationships: Running Late, Keeping Waiting

For the one who is late, ten minutes is ten minutes.

For the one who waits, ten minutes is a story.

Someone sitting in a café looks at their phone in the first five minutes. At the seventh minute, at the door. At the tenth minute they ask themselves a question: "Why am I always the one who waits?" By the fifteenth minute that question has turned into an answer.

The person who is late, meanwhile, is on the way, really running. And repeating the same sentence inside: "This time I had left early."

The angle of this article

In the article time blindness I described the difference between knowing time and feeling it, and in the article chronic lateness individual methods such as calculating the departure time backward.

Here, rather than the method itself, I want to look at the place where time steps in between two people. Because in a relationship time is not only mine. When I am late, some of the minutes spent belong to someone else.

How time feels different

In Russell Barkley's model, being able to monitor time from inside and carry the future into present behavior is treated as part of executive functions. When this capacity weakens, behavior is shaped more by the present stimulus than by a distant consequence (Barkley, 1997).

A meta-analysis that brought together 27 studies in children and adolescents measured this difference. Participants with ADHD perceived duration as both less accurate and less consistent, and tended to overestimate how long a duration was (Zheng et al., 2022).

A review of time perception in adults also suggests that time perception can be considered a focal symptom in ADHD. The review speaks of time feeling as if it flows faster, of difficulties in tasks that require doing something at a future time, and of errors in estimating duration (Weissenberger et al., 2021).

All of these findings point in the same direction, but a warning is needed too: there is a large distance between duration-estimation tasks in the laboratory and the promise "let's meet at seven this evening." Research shows a tendency; it does not by itself explain why a particular person is late.

The glossary has two good names for this difference: time blindness and now and not now. I think the second does more work in a relationship. Because at five o'clock, seven in the evening is in the "not now" zone. At half past six it is still there. At six fifty-five it suddenly turns into "now."

Keeping people waiting, in two directions

When I said time blindness in a relationship, being late was always what came to mind. Then I realized it has a silent twin: keeping someone waiting inside the home.

Saying "I'm coming in five minutes" and staying forty minutes at the computer. Sinking into a job and not noticing that the meal you were going to eat together has gone cold. Saying you are coming to bed and moving from one video to the next.

These do not look as dramatic as being late to a meeting. But for the other person they raise the same question: "Am I less important than that screen?"

I know this pattern very well in my own work. When I dive into a brand's data or the pieces of a strategy, the clock does not run for me. When someone is waiting for me I can say "I'm coming" and I really mean it. But I cannot get up without putting the thought in my hand somewhere, and that thought connects to the next one. That "I'm coming" is not a lie, it is an intention. For the one waiting, it becomes a wait that stretches on and on.

Hyperfocus swallowing time and the difficulty of moving from one job to another overlap here. I covered the transition part separately in the article difficulty with transitions.

"Five minutes," in the mouth of a person with ADHD, is not a duration, it is a statement of intent.

What the waiting side thinks

Attribution in marriage, that is, the cause we attribute to a partner's behavior, has long been a studied subject. In three studies with married couples, the causes and responsibility attributed to a partner's negative behaviors were found to be linked to marital satisfaction. The more a person ties a negative behavior to an internal, stable and global trait of the partner, the lower the satisfaction they get from the relationship (Fincham and Bradbury, 1992).

This study was not done on ADHD. But it fits lateness very well. Because being late is perhaps one of the most frequently repeated small negative behaviors in a relationship, and every repetition gives the waiting person another chance to make an interpretation.

"There was traffic" is a situational attribution: external, temporary, specific. "He's always like this, he doesn't care about me" is a character attribution: internal, stable, global. The same ten minutes carry a completely different weight depending on which attribution they are read with.

The chronic lateness of someone with ADHD invites the second kind of attribution over time. Because it repeats. And what repeats looks like evidence about character.

Here, knowing the mechanism can offer the waiting side an alternative: instead of "he doesn't care about me," "he really struggles to feel time." But this alternative does not remove the cost of waiting. That is exactly why explanation is not enough on its own; an arrangement that protects time is needed too.

Agreements that protect both sides

These are the things that are meaningful for me and that I find worth trying. All of them are to be talked through together at a calm moment.

Give a realistic time. The time in your mind at the moment you say "I'll be there at seven" is usually the best-case scenario. If you know your own average lateness, add it when you say it: "Between seven and seven thirty." A vague range hurts less than a precise time that is missed.

Announce the delay early and concretely. If you realized at departure time that you will be late, write it at that moment: "I'll be twenty minutes late, I'll be there at 19.20." An "I'm coming" message sent when you are about to reach the door carries no information for the one waiting. An early notice with a number turns waiting from an uncertainty into a plan.

Protect the waiting person's time. Choose a place to meet where waiting is pleasant, and set the rule from the start: "if I'm late, order, go into the film, start." That way the cost of lateness falls less on the waiting side.

A timer instead of "five minutes." When you are in the middle of a job at home, instead of saying "I'm coming in five minutes," set an audible timer and tell your partner: "I've set a timer, I'll get up when it rings." When it rings, really get up. The job will be left unfinished; leaving it unfinished is cheaper than your partner waiting half an hour.

Sharing roles in jobs that need timing. Keeping track of the departure time can be one person's job and planning the route the other's. But this should not turn into the partner with ADHD handing over all responsibility for time to the other. The system should remain a support.

A sentence for the waiting side. If you are worn out by the lateness, saying it through its effect rather than through character gets a quicker result: "When you're late, I feel unimportant for twenty minutes." This sentence cannot be argued with, because it blames no one, it describes an experience.

These agreements have one thing in common: all of them make time visible. A range, a number, a timer. If the problem in time blindness is that time is not felt, the sturdiest way is to set up a time that can be seen from outside, that two people can look at together. Your partner no longer has to trust your inner clock; you are both looking at the same clock.

Apology and responsibility

The value of an apology is measured by what comes after it. The same apology at every late arrival loses its weight after a while.

What is more meaningful to me is this: putting a change behind the apology. Together with "I'm sorry," "from now on I'm setting an alarm for my departure time," or "next time I'll say seven thirty."

When choosing a change, it also helps to rely on measurement instead of estimation. Noting for a few weeks how late you are to meetings and how many minutes the "five minutes" you say at home really last gives you a personal average. That average becomes the basis of the times you give from now on. Sharing the number with your partner is a good idea too; both of you then plan with a real number instead of an optimistic estimate.

As someone with ADHD, struggling to feel time is not my fault. But reducing the cost that struggle places on someone else is my responsibility.

What stays with me

For many years I thought of time as something that belonged to me. If I am late, I spoil my own day; if I cannot keep up, my own work suffers.

Looking from inside a relationship and seeing that time is a shared material taught me something else: the minutes of someone who is waiting can be the measure of the most concrete attention I can give them.

Even if I cannot feel time, I can set up ways of protecting it.