Dear Abby: Husband’s alternate route home upsets his wife

Dear Abby: My husband and I, 21 years happily married, have a recurring problem. It rarely happens, but when it does, it causes an argument.

A recent example: Late the other evening, my husband, adult daughter and I were returning home from a hockey game in separate cars due to our work schedules before the game. There are several routes to get home from where we were. I followed my daughter, while my husband took a different route to get home faster.

I think it would have been a chivalrous and fatherly thing for him to follow us and make sure we made it home safely. I got angry that he didn't do it, and it turned into a huge argument. My grown daughters and I are fiercely feminist and independent, but I still think it would have been the caring thing to do. My own father would, even after I was 40, and he still does it to this day.

It didn't bother my daughter, but it bothered me. What are your thoughts, Abby? If you think it's not an issue, I will let it go from now on.

— To Follow or Not to Follow

Dear To Follow: Your father comes from a generation in which men were taught it was their duty to protect the females in their family. Your spouse is the husband of a fiercely feminist wife and the father of a daughter cut from the same cloth. Independent women do not need to be followed home unless they request it because they assume they can handle whatever happens themselves — particularly if they are traveling in twos. You can't have it both ways.

You say you have a happy marriage. Please give your husband a break.