I Said It Would Be Faster My Way

We were already running a little behind.

Nothing major, but enough that I didn’t want to waste time doing things the “long way.”

He was getting ready, and I was trying to throw something together real quick before we left.

It was one of those simple things—should’ve taken five minutes.

He walked in, watched me for a second, and said, “If you just do it this way, it’ll go quicker.”

I didn’t even look up.

“I’m good. This is faster.”

I fully believed that.

In my head, I was already ahead of him.

Except I wasn’t.

Because about two minutes in, something didn’t come together right.

So I had to stop.

Undo it.

Start over.

At that point, I was already annoyed, but now I was committed to proving that my way still worked.

He didn’t say anything else. Just leaned on the counter and watched me try to recover.

I sped up.

Which made it worse.

Now I’m dropping things, redoing steps, getting more frustrated by the second.

What should’ve taken five minutes was now pushing ten… then fifteen.

He quietly stepped in at one point and said, “Want me to just—”

“No.”

Too fast. Too defensive.

Even I heard it.

So he backed off.

I kept going.

Finally finished… but not clean, not smooth, and definitely not faster.

We ended up leaving later than we should have.

As we were heading out, I grabbed my stuff and said, “Don’t.”

He smiled a little and said, “I wasn’t going to.”

Which somehow made it worse.

Because we both knew.

If I had just listened the first time, we would’ve been out the door ten minutes earlier.

My husband was right.