# The one thing your spouse does that drives you nuts? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [July 15, 2011, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-thing-your-spouse-does-that-drives-you-nuts/589147 "2011-07-15T17:31:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![NinetyWt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/cc9497/32.png) [@NinetyWt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NinetyWt)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2011, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-thing-your-spouse-does-that-drives-you-nuts/589147/21 "2011-07-15T21:43:22Z")
My darling husband sits on the side of the bed to put his boots on, or take them off. He is a big man and he shakes the WHOLE BED. :mad: I provided a chair in the bedroom for him to sit in, but he still sits on the side of the bed. This is just about the only thing that bugs me about him, so I’ve just accepted it as the price I pay to have him around. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2011, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-thing-your-spouse-does-that-drives-you-nuts/589147/22 "2011-07-15T21:45:25Z")
My wife mumbles the end of her sentences. She’ll say “Today I went to the store and got a mumble mumble”. I say “What?” She says “ **Today I went to the store and got a** mumble mumble”. I say “What?”. She says… well you get the idea. ---
**Author:** ![Labtrash](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/labtrash/32/528_2.png) [@Labtrash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Labtrash)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2011, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-thing-your-spouse-does-that-drives-you-nuts/589147/23 "2011-07-15T22:35:06Z")
530 am her alarm goes off she hits snooze 540am her alarm goes off she hits snooze 550am her alarm goes off she hits snooze 600am - time for ME to wake up. ---
**Author:** ![Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mean_mr.mustard/32/3865_2.png) [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mean_Mr.Mustard)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2011, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-thing-your-spouse-does-that-drives-you-nuts/589147/24 "2011-07-16T00:45:56Z")
I have a couple. Wait, who am I kidding? I got a thousand of them. But for now I will share just two: 1. Our top refrigerator shelf allows much more vertical space than all the others. Tall things go up there, because they cannot go elsewhere. But she will place a cup of yogurt, a piece of fruit, and a small bowl of Jello on the top shelf. I know this, because when I go to put the gallon of milk away, I have to first move the yogurt, the fruit, and the Jello to another shelf to make room. Grrrrrr. 2. She loves the word ‘thing’. She cannot get enough of it. “Did you get that thing?” “We should buy that thing today.” “Can you put that thing on the thing?” Again, Grrrrr. mmm ---
**Author:** ![Rand\_Rover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/db5fbb/32.png) [@Rand\_Rover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rand_Rover)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2011, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-thing-your-spouse-does-that-drives-you-nuts/589147/25 "2011-07-16T02:21:55Z")
My wife is severely directionally impaired. Severely. But I (thought I) fixed the driving aspect of this impairment by getting a car with a navigation system. So far she’s defeated it by (I) choosing the “maximize highways” route when there are two long highways in a V between point A and point B and (ii) not just putting in a nearby address when it won’t take the address she wants. I can’t wait to see how she defeats it in the future. ---
**Author:** ![black\_rabbit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f19dbf/32.png) [@black\_rabbit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/black_rabbit)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2011, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-thing-your-spouse-does-that-drives-you-nuts/589147/26 "2011-07-16T02:28:05Z")
One: I do 99% of the cooking, but for some reason, she thinks she has a better idea of where or how we should store kitchen utensils and appliances. A constantly changing idea. So I’ll go to grab, say, a pasta strainer from the drawer where I normally put it. It’s not there. It’s not in the other drawer, where I found it last time, either. Nope - it’s on the bottom shelf of the cupboard, with the pots and pans. Or maybe in the drawer where we keep the towels. Even better, since she doesn’t cook, she seems to think that the counter/stovetop/towel rack is the perfect place to display the twee decorative (but useless) kitchen shit that she apparently gets from Anthropologie. WE HAVE A TINY KITCHEN. GET THAT FUCKING TEA KETTLE OFF OF MY STOVE. YOU DON’T EVEN DRINK TEA. AND WHY ARE THERE BATTERIES IN THE KNIFE DRAWER. Two: She’s not allowed to come to the hardware store with me any more, because she apparently assumes that because I _chose_ to live in apartments and make my landlords do most of the upkeep for 13 years before we met, I don’t know anything about tools or fixing things. I’ll go to buy, say, a new closer for the screen door, and she’ll stand there in the aisle at Home Depot second guessing everything I put into the cart. “Are you sure that’s the one we need? Why don’t we get this one instead? What do you mean it won’t work on aluminum? Are you sure? Maybe we should ask this teenager in an orange apron, who has never seen us or our door before, what kind we should get.” Or calling friends and family to ask whether we can hang a ceiling fan from the bare-plaster affixed light fixture after I tell her that we need to have an anchored junction box put in to keep the fan from falling to the floor, when a) they’ve never seen the fixture in question, and b) have never so much as replaced a light switch, let alone installed a ceiling fan (which I have done. Several times.) That’s it. Otherwise, she’s awesome. I’m sure her list is a helluva lot longer. ---
**Author:** ![j666](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9de0a6/32.png) [@j666](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/j666)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2011, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-thing-your-spouse-does-that-drives-you-nuts/589147/27 "2011-07-16T02:51:58Z")
One thing? Today, breathe. ---
**Author:** ![BaneSidhe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/c5a1d2/32.png) [@BaneSidhe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BaneSidhe)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2011, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-thing-your-spouse-does-that-drives-you-nuts/589147/28 "2011-07-16T03:08:51Z")
Hubby-Mine seems to not understand that any clothing that is not in the hamper at laundry time is not going to be washed. I would let him do the laundry but I remember how he did his laundry when he was single and there is no way I’m going to let him throw everything into one big load. ---
**Author:** ![Hokkaido\_Brit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/d26b3c/32.png) [@Hokkaido\_Brit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hokkaido_Brit)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2011, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-thing-your-spouse-does-that-drives-you-nuts/589147/29 "2011-07-16T03:35:28Z")
Mine has two big niggles in his design - 1. He puts something down and expects it to be RIGHT THERE when he one day decides to pick it up again. Lovely idea except he usually dumps everything on the dining table, but actually lives and works away. So we get aggrieved “Where’s that scrap of torn paper with a scribbled serial number on it? I left it right HERE.” Well dearest, you’ve been gone for three weeks and since then there have been 50-odd meals and 20-odd homework sessions conducted on that table. We don’t just go into suspended animation while you aren’t here, dearest. Grrrr. 2. He gets agitaged and upset if he spots any other family member looking for things. Even the kids search for stuff furtively now or gesture wildly at me just out of his line of sight. If I lose something I start where I think it’s hidden and start tidying my way round the house till it turns up. If he notices that I’m looking for something, he gets agitated and starts “helping” me look by madly turning out drawers and cupboards by yanking them open and upending the contents on the floor, then moving onto the next place, as I follow behind trying to stem the chaos and pleading with him that the passports are not going to be in the vegetable crisper… This is highly annoying because when I do lose something important I dare not confess it for knowing what chaos I will reap. So last week I spent four hours looking for my credit card that wasn’t in my wallet when I needed it. I was worried because my last memory was using it in a restaurant last weekend so I was worried that it had gotten left behind. Finally I called him at work - “Oh sorry! I’ve got it, I took it to buy petrol and forgot to put it back in your wallet. I’ll give it back this weekend.” Grrrr. If he was “Normal” I could have just called him in the first ten minutes of my worry and been reassured! Having said that - I think he has a lot more niggles about me. I’m messy, I’m a horrible cook, I’m overly strict with the boys (in his opinion!!) and I’m about 4 times more sociable than he is which causes stress for him when he comes home to yet another barbecue or day out planned! So I won’t complain… ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2011, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-thing-your-spouse-does-that-drives-you-nuts/589147/30 "2011-07-16T03:40:45Z")
> [@Lynn\_Bodoni](#): > > He’s brought home airplane parts. Submarine parts. I swear he was planning on building a Los Angeles class sub in the barn or something. I would have to make him take shit back every few weeks. [ok, fine, he used to put shit in his pocket and forget it was there, bug I still can’t explain the 6 inch titanium ball valve ball 😕] I love him dearly, but he chews ice. I want to take pliers to his molars sometimes. ---
**Author:** ![salinqmind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3ec8ea/32.png) [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2011, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-thing-your-spouse-does-that-drives-you-nuts/589147/31 "2011-07-16T05:21:30Z")
When he’s eating in the kitchen and has to have a bowl of Doritos with his supper. I hear him take the bowl out of the cupboard. Krinkle of bag unwrapping. Hard Dorito chips pinging into the bowl, a sound like nails on a blackboard. Then…crunch! munch munch munch munch munch…Crunch! munch munch munch munch…Crunch! munch etc. Then: round two: more hard Dorito chips pinging into the bowl. Crunch! munch etc. I have to leave the room, it so infuriates me. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2011, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-thing-your-spouse-does-that-drives-you-nuts/589147/32 "2011-07-16T05:24:45Z")
> [@aruvqan](#): > > \ > I love him dearly, but he chews ice. I want to take pliers to his molars sometimes. The dentist will do it for you - chewing ice can break your teeth. ---
**Author:** ![flatlined](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/eb9ed0/32.png) [@flatlined](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flatlined)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2011, 6:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-thing-your-spouse-does-that-drives-you-nuts/589147/33 "2011-07-16T06:47:14Z")
My ex sweetie used to leave his clothes where they dropped. We had many fights about me tripping over his boots. My current sweetie, who used to listen to me complain about the boots on the floor is almost patholigical about not only picking his boots up, but follows me around to be sure I’m not leavng stuff around that I’ll trip over. I swear to gord, the next time he re-arranges my living room while I’m asleep…well…bad things will happen when I wake up. I’ll be so evil that I’ll brew decaff! ---
**Author:** ![HazelNutCoffee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@HazelNutCoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HazelNutCoffee)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2011, 8:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-thing-your-spouse-does-that-drives-you-nuts/589147/34 "2011-07-16T08:07:44Z")
> [@Moonlitherial](#): > > This except of course my husband. It’s not just that he’s always late, he never wants to be the one waiting. My boyfriend is the same way. When we’re waiting for a plane he never wants to stand in line until the last possible minute. This is fine when we’re sitting somewhere close to the boarding gate, but usually we’ll be sitting some distance away (because the seats near the gate are usually full), so we can’t really see what’s going on. Getting to the airport - same deal. He hates waiting around, whereas I would rather get there early and have to kill time. I mean, it’s an airplane, not a bus. The next one is not coming along in an hour, you know? ---
**Author:** ![Shirley\_Ujest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shirley\_Ujest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shirley_Ujest)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2011, 9:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-thing-your-spouse-does-that-drives-you-nuts/589147/35 "2011-07-16T09:45:56Z")
Mr. Ujest is wonderful. But give him a weedwacker and every living plant on the planet, except weeds, are his enemy. He has _decimated_ my perennial garden around a fence that took me years to groom and love and adore. The extremely tall, very pickery weeds that are Waiting To Attack anyone who touches it, are unmolested. ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2011, 10:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-thing-your-spouse-does-that-drives-you-nuts/589147/36 "2011-07-16T10:24:33Z")
> [@shiftless](#): > > Always late. Always, always, always. No matter how important or trivial the thing is, she is late for it. She was a half hour late to meet my parents for the first time. She managed to be late for our wedding by about 15 minutes, we had to send someone in to see what she and the maid-of-honor were up to. When we go out to dinner she just happens to be in the middle of something else at the time we agree upon, so I have to cool my heels. Over the years she has decided that I have some sort of anal compulsion to be early so it is my “fault” that I think she is late. The fact that we never, ever appear anywhere at the time we say we will doesn’t make any difference. The jokes from our friends about our lateness, the friends who have just stopped asking us out and the friends who tell us the wrong time so we will be on time - they are all mistaken too. I can’t decide if I want to out live her or not. I am very curious to see how she will manage to be late for her own funeral. Ha, my wife could have written this about me. Thing is, I \*hate \*being early for things and having to hang around waiting. So I always aim to be _exactly_ on time. And, most of the time, I am. Thing is, my wife wants to be early, so in her eyes, being on time, or having to rush to get somewhere, means “late”. I call it efficiency. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![PandaBear77](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/edb3f5/32.png) [@PandaBear77](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PandaBear77)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2011, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-thing-your-spouse-does-that-drives-you-nuts/589147/37 "2011-07-16T11:16:52Z")
If he’s sitting down, one of his knees is bouncing. Constantly. _bouncebouncebouncebouncebounce_ If I put my hand on the offending knee to make it stop, the other one starts in _bouncebouncebouncebouncebounce_ Grrrr! ---
**Author:** ![SanVito](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sanvito/32/2805_2.png) [@SanVito](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SanVito)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2011, 11:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-thing-your-spouse-does-that-drives-you-nuts/589147/38 "2011-07-16T11:31:37Z")
Two things. 1. Leaving the dishcloth in the sink. Not wringing the dishcloth out and putting it on the drainer, oh no, she always has to leave it in the sink, you know, the sink you use to poor cold coffee down and drop dirty dishes into. So the dishcloth – let’s now call it a dirty, sopping old rag – is always dirty and sopping and stinking. Yes, she has been told on a number of occasions. 2. Back seat driving. ‘You should be in that lane’, ‘watch that car’, ‘you want to be in the left lane here’. She has a thing about road positioning. Even other passengers tell her to shut the fuck up already! ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2011, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-thing-your-spouse-does-that-drives-you-nuts/589147/39 "2011-07-16T15:24:15Z")
When driving, the Mrs. uses cruise control. A lot. In all kinds of traffic situations, including heavy downtown traffic, stop and go traffic, merging traffic, etc. This makes me nervous. I’m more the kind of guy who only uses cruise control if I’m on a rural highway with no other traffic in sight and at least 100 miles yet to go before I have to decelerate. And because she hates to turn cruise control off, she’ll try to pass someone who’s going about 1/10 of an mph slower than her, oblivious to the folks backing up behind her while she does her slow motion pass maneuver. She won’t even pause the cruise control to speed up. But she’s driven hundreds of thousands of miles like this, and never had a significant accident, and her last ticket was decades ago, so I just shut up. Or try to. ---
**Author:** ![singular1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ba9def/32.png) [@singular1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/singular1)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2011, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-thing-your-spouse-does-that-drives-you-nuts/589147/40 "2011-07-16T15:39:29Z")
Politics. Suddenly politics has become the overwhelming subject of his attention. I watch the Daily Show, Colbert Report and Bill Mahr because I like political humor, but now it becomes grist for the rant mill. Every morning I get an Outrage Report of what he saw on Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz the night before as I was sleeping. Yesterday I tried to gently point this out to him, only to get a speech about how it’s important because (& I can’t believe he said this) this is a time of national crisis like never before!!!:rolleyes: Thank og Bush is gone - he actually Godwinized him. After he pointed out the seriousness of our national dilemma, he gave me the “but fine. You don’t want to hear it, I won’t bring it up again” pout, and not thirty minutes later I said “it cost $50 to fill the tank today!”, and he said “well, Barney Frank - never mind.”. So we’ll see. It can’t last. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-thing-your-spouse-does-that-drives-you-nuts/589147.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-thing-your-spouse-does-that-drives-you-nuts/589147.md?page=3)