Ohhh Sandra! Thank you for this deeply honest sharing. I can relate to a lot of what you said.

You’re more flexible than I am. If people are 15-20 mins late without a prior heads up, I’m NOT happy.

Like you with the request for a 1-hr delay, I would struggle to do anything meaningful and the hour would be wasted but depending on who the person is, I might agree. And I’d feel irritated.

I’ve also been known to decline with the excuse that I had other commitments. Even if it wasn’t an appt. or something, I just didn’t want my day messed up. Especially if it had already been impacted by the “almost meeting.”

I think if I were already irritated by the 1-hr delay, I would have bowed out with the further 30-min delay. I think I’d have been too annoyed and unable to hide my feelings on finally meeting.

I have a huge issue with feeling disrespected. That’s a big “poke” for me so as I was reading your story, I kept thinking how disrespectful this person was being in requesting delays. I was thinking if I’d been that person, I’d have just said “you go on without me, if I can join I will. Otherwise catch you another time.”

So I totally understood your anger. True, it wasn’t helpful to anyone to express it in an unhealthy way but I do believe you had every right to feel it.

I’ve definitely had my own moments of inappropriate expressions of anger, usually for feeling disrespected in some way, and then beat myself up for having been disrespectful in return! How ironic.

I hope you’ve got to the point of forgiving yourself. I find that so hard sometimes. But it’s sure worth making the effort.

Sending lots of big hugs 💖