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What are your long-term, ongoing, topics of bickering with dh?


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I shut down Google when I'm done with it. He wants it constantly on. He can't retrain me.

 

He leaves yuck in the strainer in the sink. This makes me :ack2:. I can't retrain him.

 

I am the primary driver of the van, and I move the seat up. He gets in and says, "Holy Hug the Steering Wheel, Batman!" He wonders why I can't move the seat back after I'm done driving (because I'll have to move it up again in half an hour?). I wonder why can't he just move the seat before he gets in (once every other week)? [i actually move it up just to hear him say, "Holy Hug the Steering Wheel, Batman!"]

 

Ironically, I fall asleep when he starts talking about anesthesia (his profession). He can't retrain me. ;)

 

He falls asleep when I start talking about homeschooling. I can't retrain him. ;)

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we dont fight much (since that fight where he moved out) . . we mutter some. He hates that I'm clumsy, gets really upset if I take food off of his plate, and if i ever try to correct ANYTHING he does, he runs out of the room and wont talk to me for a few hours :glare:

 

I have learned not to look at the pots and pans (which still have soap on them when he puts them in the drying rack) because, hey, he's cleaning them. I will speak to him if he's being to mean to everyone - cant take your bad job out on us, dude.

 

the biggest ongoing fight we have is about affection more than about sex. I need affection and he .. . doesnt. When we were first together, he was SUPER affectionate, but now he says he's just not that way. which of course makes no sense. He says he isnt comfortable being affectionate in front of my kids (the two olders arent his). I have to ask permission to touch him or he yells when I do. I've MADE him do things like kiss me as he leaves for work, but its a ritual which does not fill my needs, but its the only thing he'll do. I dont want to do stuff for him in bed if he wont meet my touch needs before bed, but he wont want to touch me until he's naked in bed and 'ready' . . . and then I get mad. This has been ongoing for 8 of our 10 years. I manage to live with it most of the time, but if i'm PMSing or just feeling really physically needy, i get really mad . . because i want so much and get so little. Even the frequency . . . is less than I want, but i cant do it more often if he wont even consider it until after midnight . . . which is why we sometimes do it in the middle of the night, because i'm not as tired at 3 am as i am at 12, and i'm also not awake enough to be mad at him, plus at least we've been touching a little for the past 3 hours.

 

once in a while, he's affectionate . . when he's super happy. so i know some of it is depression. but its this huge, huge issue that he just refuses to deal with. If i have a big fight, refuse to 'do' it unless he touches me during the day, or send him long emails detailing exactly what he's supposed to do and why . . he's better for a day. ONE DAY. and then i give up cuz its easier to just be disappointed and accept it than to try really really hard and still be disappointed.

 

ok, and just writing about it makes me mad all over again . . .

Edited by dbmamaz
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All of the above. :glare: Honestly, though, we don't bicker about anything. I just don't think it's worth it because he never changes anyway.

 

I'll give you an original one, though. He's up and out the door everyday before the kids and I get up. Every morning I come downstairs and head to the bathroom. I lift the lid on the toilet and it's full of #2. And after that's been sitting there for awhile it's not pretty. :glare: He claims if he flushes the kids will wake up. I told him I'd rather get up early than to see that first thing in the morning. He still does it. :glare:

:001_huh: Wow, that would be a fight here, too. :ack2:
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Most of the things that we bicker over are my quirks.

 

I don't tell people I am from the States. Local people know this, but others don't. My dh tells people this all the time. He thinks it's neat. I do not. I maintain that it is my place to tell things about myself, not his. He maintains that I make a big deal over nothing in this regard. I maintain that he can shove that argument.

 

I rinse all cans, including pop cans even if they are diet pop. Bugs are gross and bugs love residue in cans. Plus we recycle, so I think it's icky to recycle non-rinsed anything. He insists that diet pop has no sugar and they don't have to be rinsed because it'll dry up to nothing. He insists that my bug concerns are unfounded, as I no longer live in Florida, home of the traumatically sized bugs.

 

I can never have less than 8 rolls of toilet paper in the house. I have a secret stash just in case. He says that's a sign of something awful. My explanation is that, once, my mom took my brother and me grocery shopping at the commissary and later in the car she cried because she had to put the toilet paper back because she didn't have enough money. To my 5 year old inner child, poor is not having enough money to buy toilet paper. I fear being that bad off, and some memories implant themselves very firmly. My dh does not understand this and says that of all my "quirks," he is sure that this is the one that will send me to the nuthouse one day.

 

I refuse to cook on a schedule. The localism here is to cook on a specific schedule: Roast beef on Sunday (cooked to thorough greyness :001_rolleyes:), leftovers on Monday, chicken on Tuesday, pork chops on Wednesday, spaghetti or other pasta on Thursday, fish on Friday (natch - Catholic town) and on Saturday you can go completely wild and crazy and do something like pizza or something exotic like a stir-fry. Dh says that if we invite people for supper, we have to cook according to the schedule because that is what they would expect. I maintain that if they know me well enough to be invited for supper, they will know to expect the unexpected. I simply will not cook like that. I sometimes even purposefully go grocery shopping in town and make a point of asking for a steak (which I do not need because we have our own beef) on a Tuesday, just because I know they won't have cut any and they will say, "why do you want a steak today? It's chicken." And, then I can feign disbelief and ignorance of the "law of the cooking schedule" just to mess with them a little. My dh says this is petty. I say it is fabulously rebellious. He says that is the same thing. I say pffffft. :tongue_smilie:

Edited by Audrey
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Longest-running bicker: hubby comes out of the shower dripping wet and soaks the bath mat and floor. Then he dries off. I keep telling him to dry off in the shower and the bath mat is to catch the residual. No dice! My soaky soupy hubby wins this round.

 

Thankfully he is easy going enough that he doesn't nag me about anything. Even the mountain of hair I lose on the bathroom floor every single day :D

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I don't turn off the radio before turning off the car so the radio comes on right away when he turns on the car. He finds that really irritating.

 

He uses he kitchen counter as a dumping ground for all his stuff. It drives me batty. Neither of us have mentioned either irritation in a while. After 16 years maybe we're just going to let it go. :D

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All of the above. :glare: Honestly, though, we don't bicker about anything. I just don't think it's worth it because he never changes anyway.

 

I'll give you an original one, though. He's up and out the door everyday before the kids and I get up. Every morning I come downstairs and head to the bathroom. I lift the lid on the toilet and it's full of #2. And after that's been sitting there for awhile it's not pretty. :glare: He claims if he flushes the kids will wake up. I told him I'd rather get up early than to see that first thing in the morning. He still does it. :glare:

 

 

Oh that is *really* disgusting. I wouldn't be able to take that. Seriously. :confused:

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We don't bicker about things, but there are things that drive both of us nuts about the other. We've been married for 18 years and neither of us has improved in these areas...

 

HIM

- not wiping the counter after he makes coffee - he leaves grounds everywhere

- when he does wipe the counter, he doesn't squeeze out the dishcloth very well. Therefore the counter is always wet

- he will leave 1-2 Tbsp of yogurt in the container, or 4-5 pieces of cereal in the bag. That drives all of us nuts, except him of course....he's full and doesn't want anymore.

- the way he just throws stuff into the dishwasher and hopes things will come clean.

 

ME

- my clutter. I don't put stuff away and I have stacks of things. He is very neat and I drive him crazy with that.

- I go from tidying up one area to another without finishing the first. Therefore, everything is a mess!

 

I'm sure there are many more things, but he's pretty easy-going!

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I refuse to cook on a schedule. The localism here is to cook on a specific schedule: Roast beef on Sunday (cooked to thorough greyness :001_rolleyes:), leftovers on Monday, chicken on Tuesday, pork chops on Wednesday, spaghetti or other pasta on Thursday, fish on Friday (natch - Catholic town) and on Saturday you can go completely wild and crazy and do something like pizza or something exotic like a stir-fry. Dh says that if we invite people for supper, we have to cook according to the schedule because that is what they would expect. I maintain that if they know me well enough to be invited for supper, they will know to expect the unexpected. I simply will not cook like that. I sometimes even purposefully go grocery shopping in town and make a point of asking for a steak (which I do not need because we have our own beef) on a Tuesday, just because I know they won't have cut any and they will say, "why do you want a steak today? It's chicken." And, then I can feign disbelief and ignorance of the "law of the cooking schedule" just to mess with them a little. My dh says this is petty. I say it is fabulously rebellious. He says that is the same thing. I say pffffft. :tongue_smilie:

 

Fascinating. A little like The Stepford Wives. :001_huh: Maybe you could just tell the butcher, "in the States we could eat whatever we want whenever we want". :lol: That would kind of be giving your dh something he wants. ;)

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I'll give you an original one, though. He's up and out the door everyday before the kids and I get up. Every morning I come downstairs and head to the bathroom. I lift the lid on the toilet and it's full of #2. And after that's been sitting there for awhile it's not pretty. :glare: He claims if he flushes the kids will wake up. I told him I'd rather get up early than to see that first thing in the morning. He still does it. :glare:

 

:blink::ack2: Do you only have one bathroom? If not, I'd make everyone else use a different bathroom and leave that little gift for him to encounter the next morning. If it is the only bathroom, I'd just flush once or twice before ever lifting the lid. Or maybe I'd pay a kid to add flushing to their morning chores. ;)

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We don't bicker or fight. I think we've had maybe 2 fights in the 14 years we've been together.

 

I have grown more anxious when driving on the interstate. Correction, when HE'S driving. I think he drives too fast, and too close to the cars in front of us. I've decided to read my Kindle or iPad when I know we'll be driving on the interstate to avoid making HIM jumpy with my anxiety.

 

Other than that, I can't really think of anything.

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My DH is a creature of habit. He likes everything the same, always. While shopping at Target today, I noticed that they changed the bottle of his brand of shampoo to a PUMP and there I was laughing hysterically in a Target aisle.

 

I actually took a photo of it and texted it to him to prepare him for the shock and he called me seconds later wanting to know if there wasn't another size or some other alternative.

 

I am a "fly by the seat of my pants" kind of person and it drives him nuts on his worst days. On my worst days with him, he bores me to tears with his need for everything to be the same or goddess awful tales of antibiotic resistant infections. Because pus is something EVERYONE wants to chat about over dinner. :ack2:

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I've been married almost 16 years and for all those years my dh has NEVER put the stupid dish towel back where it goes when he uses it. He just balls it up and tosses it on the counter. :glare:

 

And in all that time I have consistently overstuffed the garbage can and it drives him nuts. :tongue_smilie:

 

I realized it tonight as I was putting the dish towel away AGAIN. :lol:

 

Out of all the ways in which we have changed and compromised over the years, these two things have remained the same.

 

So how about you? What little things have you and your dh been bickering about for your entire marriage?

 

 

.

'

 

Not much. "Slow down" is probably what I say most, when I am riding with him. I abhor tailgating, the evil bane of the highways, and the major cause of virtually all accidents. But other than that....Oh yeah, tell me to turn before we are actually there! I can't turn from three lanes over RIGHT HERE. So I guess just driving stuff. :auto:

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Wow! This is us, almost word for word, except I happen to love getting the mail every day. :)

 

My dh 'hates' that I often forget to have my cell phone with me. Last weekend he went hunting with his brother and their vehicle broke down. He called my phone, texted dd, and texted the home computer (we have wireless internet with SNS). Didn't get through to any of us and had to wait until his other brother was available to come get them. He was not happy. LOL

 

He:

Hangs his clothes on the bedpost.

Won't finish the last of anything--milk, cereal, etc. He leaves a teeny, tiny bit in the bottom of the container and puts it away! Then he opens a new one. Drives me insane!

Leaves his shoes and socks (socks balled up) wherever he is when he takes them off.

 

I:

Never have my cell phone with me.

Always forget to hang up his shirts before they get wrinkled in the dryer or clothes basket.

Never get the mail and it piles up for days.

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:blink::ack2: Do you only have one bathroom? If not, I'd make everyone else use a different bathroom and leave that little gift for him to encounter the next morning. If it is the only bathroom, I'd just flush once or twice before ever lifting the lid. Or maybe I'd pay a kid to add flushing to their morning chores. ;)

 

 

That's the thing - we have THREE bathrooms. THREE. And he chooses the main one to do this in. :glare: I understand not using the upstairs bathroom because that's where we're all sleeping. But we have another bathroom that's on the other side of the house downstairs where I'm quite sure the flush wouldn't wake the kids. And it's a toilet flushing for crying out loud! Not a fire alarm going off! :glare:

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That's the thing - we have THREE bathrooms. THREE. And he chooses the main one to do this in. :glare: I understand not using the upstairs bathroom because that's where we're all sleeping. But we have another bathroom that's on the other side of the house downstairs where I'm quite sure the flush wouldn't wake the kids. And it's a toilet flushing for crying out loud! Not a fire alarm going off! :glare:

 

Well that's just rude and gross! :tongue_smilie:

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Erm.....that he splashes water everywhere when he washes dishes, and then doesnt wipe it up. It seems minor but at one time, it really annoyed me. I know Ive come a long way because it no longer irks me but still irks my mother when he does the dishes for her :) As for me, I'm perfect LOL. No, for me it would be that I eat my lunch BEFORE cleaning up and putting away bread, mayo etc. He used to get really annoyed at that. But what if I want more? :)

 

Finally, last but not least *and this still bugs me* when we would travel together, he would bring every last newspaper, magazine and journal that he hadnt read for the past 6 months and pile them in huge, wave like piles around him (on the plane, or in the footwell of the passenger seat, or on the seat next to him on the train) as he finished them. He looked like he was drowing in a sea of paper, and I would get embarrassed or annoyed. But now most of what he reads is on the iPAD. Hooray!!!!!! no paper sea!!!!

 

Oh, and he SAYS I dont put the tops back on things, but that is simply not true. :tongue_smilie::tongue_smilie:

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ME

- my clutter. I don't put stuff away and I have stacks of things. He is very neat and I drive him crazy with that.

- I go from tidying up one area to another without finishing the first. Therefore, everything is a mess!

 

I'm sure there are many more things, but he's pretty easy-going!

 

I do that too. A pile for everything and everything in it's pile! ;)

 

I think he's pretty used to it by now. Even where things are organized (like the school shelf of currently needed items), I'm the one to remember where things were anyway.

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My DH is a creature of habit. He likes everything the same, always. While shopping at Target today, I noticed that they changed the bottle of his brand of shampoo to a PUMP and there I was laughing hysterically in a Target aisle.

 

I actually took a photo of it and texted it to him to prepare him for the shock and he called me seconds later wanting to know if there wasn't another size or some other alternative.

 

I am a "fly by the seat of my pants" kind of person and it drives him nuts on his worst days. On my worst days with him, he bores me to tears with his need for everything to be the same or goddess awful tales of antibiotic resistant infections. Because pus is something EVERYONE wants to chat about over dinner. :ack2:

 

This whole thread is hilarious, but this post made me laugh so hard that I am actually crying a bit. Someone needs to print out all of these posts for inclusion in premarital counseling programs.

 

My husband wishes I would close the kitchen cabinet doors. I wish he would wash the toothpaste out of the bathroom sink. I can't imagine that I will ever remember to close the cabinet doors, so I guess I'll be finding blobs of toothpaste in the sink ... forever.

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I was reminded of one of my biggest annoyances a little while ago. He piles up his dirty clothes behind the bathroom door. Stuffed right into the corner so that the door won't open even close to all the way. :glare: It's a small bathroom. You have to shove against the door in order to open it enough to squeeze past the counter just to pull the clothes out from behind the door. He does this every. single. day.

 

At our old place we had two bathrooms. I actually stopped using our master bath just because I got so sick of this. I shared the main with DD. I stopped going in there to get them for laundry. I washed what was in the hamper. When I would go into 'his' bathroom for any reason, there would be a freaking mountain behind the door. That one didn't have a counter directly inside the door, so you could still get by even with a ton of clothes there.

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I do that too. A pile for everything and everything in it's pile! ;)

 

See, I'm the same way, and I do know that it annoys him. However, I'm also trying to keep up with my stuff, DD7's stuff, DD10's stuff, the house's stuff, food stuff, money stuff, all paperwork and mail, laundry for 4 people, and, yes, his stuff. He's only taking care of one person! He'll walk over the same toy in the hallway repeatedly the same way the kids will!

 

I went away for a business trip once, and I had to bring a lot with me. My hotel room was so neat and organized, and I was early everywhere I went. It was miraculous, and I was so proud of myself! Because I was only caring for one person and no home stuff :glare: That gave me a whole new perspective on this issue.

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The biggest one went on for years but he has stopped, after sixteen years, he stopped turning off the stove timer and walking away without taking out whatever was in the oven. We had many ruined baked items that way, and it took him years and a marriage counselor to decide to TELL me he was turning off the timer but he didn't know if the cake/cookies/ meat was done so he didn't take them out.

 

I don't do work in the order dh would like. I start backward at every project and "rework" areas that I didn't understand should be done first. This makes him mad, but hey, I start projects instead of dithering over the proper order until it is too late to plant flowers, paint the trim, ect.

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20 years ago, I learned that dh likes the dishes set up a certain way in the dishwasher. Ditto for silverware. I stopped loading at that point, and only do so when he is away. The kids tried to load, and found he's a total Sheldon. They load when he travels, but not when he is home.

 

I like a tidy kitchen. I load throughout the day, as I don't like dirty dishes in the sink. However, when he helps with supper cleanup, he will rearrange them. We don't bicker about it. Haven't talked about it for two decades. He does what he does, I do what I do. You want the dishes set up a certain nerdy way? Go for it. I don't care.

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20 years ago, I learned that dh likes the dishes set up a certain way in the dishwasher. Ditto for silverware. I stopped loading at that point, and only do so when he is away. The kids tried to load, and found he's a total Sheldon. They load when he travels, but not when he is home.

 

I like a tidy kitchen. I load throughout the day, as I don't like dirty dishes in the sink. However, when he helps with supper cleanup, he will rearrange them. We don't bicker about it. Haven't talked about it for two decades. He does what he does, I do what I do. You want the dishes set up a certain nerdy way? Go for it. I don't care.

 

:lol: DH would say the same about me. He would get so offended when I moved things he put in the dishwasher. It literally took me years to get him to understand that I'm constantly moving ALL the dishes around in the dishwasher, no matter who put them in! He's gotten a smidge better about it over the last year or so, since we had that epiphany.

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I hate when dh folds laundry because our shirts end up with creases down the middle. :glare: It drives me nuts, but I guess I should be happy he helps with the laundry.

 

I also hate going in the bathroom in the mornings because he gets water everywhere while shaving, and he doesn't clean it up. :glare:

 

I know there must be many things he wishes I did differently as well, though, so I keep it to myself these days. If he was going to change and listen to my griping about these things, I figure it would have happened by now.

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:lol: DH would say the same about me. He would get so offended when I moved things he put in the dishwasher. It literally took me years to get him to understand that I'm constantly moving ALL the dishes around in the dishwasher, no matter who put them in! He's gotten a smidge better about it over the last year or so, since we had that epiphany.

 

I've never been offended. :) have at it. I don't care one bit. I have never understood, or cared to take note, of his 'system". :001_smile:

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I've never been offended. :) have at it. I don't care one bit. I have never understood, or cared to take note, of his 'system". :001_smile:

 

Oh, I didn't assume you were. That was just part of his reaction, because he felt like it was some implicit criticism. He didn't get that I didn't actually HAVE a system, outside of just trying to cram as many dishes into the dishwasher as possible. He doesn't care to do that either, and I don't care that he doesn't, so long as he gets the dishes into the dishwasher to begin with. Otherwise I feel a little like he's leaving them for "the maid" to deal with.

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Oh, I didn't assume you were. That was just part of his reaction, because he felt like it was some implicit criticism. He didn't get that I didn't actually HAVE a system, outside of just trying to cram as many dishes into the dishwasher as possible. He doesn't care to do that either, and I don't care that he doesn't, so long as he gets the dishes into the dishwasher to begin with. Otherwise I feel a little like he's leaving them for "the maid" to deal with.

 

Oh! I agree, especially,the last 2 sentences. That's not nice

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I hate how his socks end up like creepy large caterpillars all over the place, the dining room, the lounge or even the kitchen, if he decides his feet are feeling a bit hot. And why can't wrappers from individual cheese slices make it to the bench bin less than a foot from where he makes his sandwiches for lunch?

 

I bet he hates how I repeat myself a lot. If I have a good rant going I may even end up saying something 3 times. And he used to bug me about being overly neat/organised although he has grown to like that things have homes where he can find them.

 

We have a code for nagging - I just yell out "Lecture 34!" and just move on. Or I give him a hard time about a caterpillar convention that I didn't get notice about. Poor kids pick up his socks, I won't!

 

After 19 years of marriage it just ain't worth fighting over and I know he does make an effort at times, he just hasn't been able to be consistent.

 

Best wishes

Jen in Oz

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I don't like to pump gas. My dad always pumped the gas growing up. My mom's car is always full of gas when she needs it to be. When I lived at home, my dad did the same for me. My grandfathers always pumped gas for my grandmothers. So I always think my car should have gas. It doesn't.

 

No offense, but that may be the funniest thing I have ever heard ... And you are my hero for convincing your husband to even partially go along with it. :D

 

In our house:

 

I leave things on the stairs so that I can put them away the next time I go up - drives DH batty.

 

He has ADD, which would make you think that I am irked by his distractability. Nope. The opposite end of it is the real kicker. Hyper-focus is my biggest pet-peeve.

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I've been married almost 16 years and for all those years my dh has NEVER put the stupid dish towel back where it goes when he uses it. He just balls it up and tosses it on the counter. :glare:

 

And in all that time I have consistently overstuffed the garbage can and it drives him nuts. :tongue_smilie:

 

I realized it tonight as I was putting the dish towel away AGAIN. :lol:

 

Out of all the ways in which we have changed and compromised over the years, these two things have remained the same.

 

So how about you? What little things have you and your dh been bickering about for your entire marriage?

 

 

.

 

how to plant onions. I do the trench method, Dh plants individually with a string-line. Every year we have the EXACT same discussion! Silly isn't it!

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We don't really bicker, but the longstanding irritation is that dh puts things away with the often used items in the back and the less-frequently used items in front. I have purchased my own tool box because I could never find a tool when I need one and refuse to take the entire garage apart. I think we could get rid of 90% of what is in the garage because the stuff is just too inconvenient to use. Perhaps I can get a bouldering wall in there after all.

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We don't really bicker about it but....

 

Whiskers in the bathroom sink. He trims his beard a few times a week and ALWAYS leaves the sink full of whiskers. I think they turn invisible once they fall off his face and I'm the only one who sees them. :glare:

 

That said...I am horrible about leaving the kitchen cabinets open. In fact we were discussing options for saving $$ with our house build today and he suggested that just having open shelving in the kitchen would solve two problems :lol:

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Turning lights on when he enters a room but not turning them off when he leaves

 

If I ask him something like "Honey, can you please ..... xyz honey-do job ....?"

He usually replies, "I could ..." Which is his way of saying "I have the technology to do it, but I probably won't b/c I don't want to...." Grrrr.

 

The volume of the radio when traveling together -- he likes it loud, I like it under 100 decibels :D

 

His dirty socks that are deposited within 2 feet of the laundry hamper, but they never actually make it INTO the hamper. What's up with that?! If his shirts, pants and underwear are deposited in the dirty clothes basket, his socks can too!

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