Not really, no problems with direction-dependent instructions, the problem is that it’s hard for her to accept that not everybody thinks in the same way or has the same internal definitions of common concepts (like the aforementioned “fourth drawer” )
My ex was similar. There was one definition, she knew it, and everyone else either agreed or were wrong.
And “everyone” agreed w her; only a tiny benighted minority had other mistaken ideas. Oddly enough I was almost always part of that tiny minority. Odd that.
The one thing for us is she refuses to apply the manual parking brake. I use it every time (I’m half convinced at this point her continued refusal is her purposefully irritating me.)
Fortunately, the P setting in an automatic is usually good enough. Except my car is a stick. She hardly ever drives it, but I’m scared it’ll roll away one of these days.
I figure if that’s our worst disagreement, we’re pretty good. 30 years, now.
If she says the fourth drawer counting down, why don’t you assume thereafter that it’s always the fourth drawer counting down?
Reading this thread makes me realize how lucky I am with my choice of spouse. We are both a bit (but not overly) messy and can live with that. If I do a household chore and say it is good enough, it is good enough for her. We did disagree on whether to have a third child. But she didn’t argue; she just omitted birth control. In the end I was overjoyed.
I can think of only one long-term disagreement and in light of the postings above, it is really to silly to mention. She always felt that it was necessary to make the bed every morning and I didn’t. So for decades, she made it by herself. Now she is kind of feeble and it is much easier for us if we do it together, one on each side of the bed. So I do that. Big deal.
The problem is people who treat their preferences as right, and everything else as wrong. There’s a huge difference between:
Vaccines prevent disease and increase public health, and everyone should get them, anyone who disagrees with me is wrong.
and
The correct way to clean a bathroom is (this), anyone who does it differently is wrong, even if the bathroom ends up just as clean.
My now ex-wife was very much in the second category. She wasn’t mean about it, but she couldn’t stop it either. Eventually by mutual agreement she was banished from the kitchen while I was making dinner, otherwise it was intolerable for both of us.
I do, but then some other thing like that happens and we have the same discussion.
We mostly laugh about it at this point of our marriage (23 years ) but it was a cause for serious strife at first.
ETA: by mistake the post got sent as a reply to @Hari_Seldon when it should be to @SCAdian
Such wisdom! And so stupidly difficult when we’re young, no matter how much love there is.
Uh-huh. Sure it is.
However, I get that disagreements about quality standards in shared living spaces are frustrating for both parties no matter where the concrete issues of disagreement actually fall in real life, and frustrated people are allowed to do a little hyperbolic venting.
Huh. I have to admit that I too would have assumed that counting drawers, or shelves, or lines in a spreadsheet, or rows of windowpanes, or lines of code in a program, or most other things stacked vertically, overwhelmingly defaults to initializing at the top of the stack rather than the bottom.
“Is the fourth drawer in the chest of drawers the fourth one counting from the top or the bottom?” comes across to me as literally sitcom-level caricature of husbandly housekeeping-cluelessness.
Still, even if I did burst out laughing at such a question, I think I would try not to get mad about it. 
For me, the most difficult issue in marriage is the communication and interaction between us. Even if our opinions differ, as long as we are willing to communicate with each other and make efforts to accommodate each other, this is the healthiest relationship. Holding our own opinions separately will just accumulate in our hearts. One day, these issues will inevitably lead to a huge conflict. Therefore, when conflicts arise, even if we communicate and solve them immediately, it is the best way to handle them.
I have given up on a few things. We have a split kitchen sink with one side smaller with the disposal, and the larger, deeper side, which she puts the strainer in for pots, pans and utensils to air dry. The problem is the strainer never leaves the sink, so we’re always washing on the small side, which is a pain when there is lots to wash or large items. I have tried putting the strainer on the counter where it belongs, and putting it under the sink when emptied, but it eventually re-emerges and fills. We don’t talk about it any more - it’s just a silent battle.
When we go to a movie theater I never sit first, as that will 100% result in me having to move. Only she can select which seats we sit in.
Eating out - I have stopped playing the guessing game where she wants to go. When she says “Let’s go out for dinner, where do you want to go?” I no longer fall into that trap, so I’ll say “No. What are you thinking?” because she always has something in mind anyway, and will shoot down all of my suggestions.
This goes to the root of the problem, it’s not just a “her” problem, I freely admit that I ask for above-normal levels of precision in communication.
(But if the default is to start at the top of the stack, why is the lowermost floor in a building the “first floor”?)
I’d say that if she’s consistent in how she numbers things, it’ll take you a couple of exposures to that as newlyweds to discover her personal standard.
The rest of “It’s over there [vague arm wave]” is a different and larger challenge.
It took more than that because she couldn’t at first believe that I was seriously asking for definitions for things she considered absolutely undisputed.
Especially when often-times there wasn’t even an arm wave!
The stuff in this thread dovetails well with a Bluesky post I read today. It posits that humans start out assuming that everyone has the same experiences and understandings of things, and have to learn over time this isn’t the case and override that instinct.
I am somewhat like Frodo, though I do try to just investigate for myself. (I would have checked both fourth drawers first and tried to find the answer instead of asking.) In my experience, people often aren’t consistent. I’ll think I have it figured out, and they change it on me.
So I 100% feel your frustration. I have a friend who can intellectually understand, but then keeps falling back, despite my repeated insistence that I am never trying to be difficult.
And that does hurt my feelings, as it feels like “oh, you think I would be that big of an asshole?”
This is almost our “same old argument” , although it’s slightly different. My husband doesn’t ask me if it’s the third drawer from the top or the bottom. I wish he did, because that way, he wouldn’t get annoyed and tell me I should have told him I meant the third drawer from the top. But that’s not the fight- it’s when he tells me “It’s in the third closet” when we have four closets in a row. And when I ask “Third closet from the door or from the windows? " I get " The door of course” and I’m like WTF how come it’s not “From the top, of course”