Even the strongest relationships can crumble a little when expectations and reality collide.

When one husband failed to respond for just an hour after work, his wife’s imagination ran wild.

What started as a simple delay turned into a night of panic, phone calls, and wild accusations.

You’ll want to read on for this one.

AITA for Thinking an Hour Without a Reply Was No Big Deal?

I sent a text to my wife around 5:30 PM and let her know that I would be staying a bit late at work in order to help close out the day.

I thought that was a good heads-up and that an hour or so of not replying wasn’t a big deal since I was just finishing things up.

Apparently, this wasn’t clear enough for his wife.

I had several missed calls and texts from her when I came back to my phone at around 6:30 PM.

She was really upset when I called her back, telling me how worried she had been that something terrible had happened to me — like crashing my car or something.

He can’t help but scratch his head at this.

Now, for my part, I felt like an hour wasn’t all that long and was trying to respond in a humorous way, sort of like, “Hey, it was just an hour, no need to be so worried about it.”

But she felt like I was being dismissive of her feelings, particularly as she had become so concerned that she even called her mom for advice.

The people around his wife weren’t exactly helping her stay calm.

And it turns out her mom made it worse by suggesting they should call hospitals or the sheriff’s office, which I wasn’t expecting at all.

Now the ordeal has spiraled into a full-blown debate between them.

Now she thinks I’m the AH for not getting why she was so worried over this, and I’m genuinely wondering if I am.

AITA for thinking one hour was a gap that was reasonable and insignificant?

It can be hard to reason with someone experiencing strong emotions like this.

What did Reddit make of the dilemma?

His wife took things way too far, according to this commenter.

Clearer communication could have saved this couple a world of trouble.

Maybe his wife is just going through something right now that he isn’t privy to.

Without strong communication, couples are bound to be at each other’s throats.

Ultimately, he learned that his “no big deal” could very well be his wife’s worst nightmare.

Lesson learned — never underestimate the chaos a phone on silent can cause.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.