Her: “You should have turned back there.” (after we already passed that road)
Me: “Thank you, that’s helpful.”
Her: “There’s a closer parking space.” (after we already parked)
Me: “Thank you, that’s helpful.”
I’m sure my responses annoy her just as much as her comments to me. 
mmm
There is apparently some sort of issue with throwing things away because he will put a beverage container with 1/2 of an inch of beverage in it back in the fridge, or a bag of chips with five broken chips at the bottom back in the cupboard, and GO BUY MORE CHIPS and repeat until there are ten bags of (really essentially empty) chips bags in the cupboard. I have tried to ignore them to see how many bags will pile up before he does something about it, but always I end up caving and throw them out myself when they start falling out on me when I open the cabinet door.
The end of story laugh!! Every time she tells somebody what happened to her, she ends with a fake laugh. I have resisted the urge to strangle her for 10yrs now.
I firmly believe in the Death Penalty for people who leave teaser amounts in the bags and boxes.
Similar rant, with the same closing (she’s had one ticket and one non-injury accident in 38 years of driving).
What drives me nuts? Mizpullin only uses the car’s accelerate/brake as a discrete function. We are either at full power or full braking. She has no need of any intermediate level. She could do all her driving using a two position switch labeled “Max Accel” and “Lock Brakes”. Her usual speed is whatever the vehicle can reach in the interval before we need to stop again. How she avoids traffic tickets is completely beyond me. If you’re driving the highways of Texas sometime and see an ambulance screaming down the left lane with lights and sirens, with a white Toyota tailgating him and honking for him to move aside so she can pass… That’s my wife. Be sure to wave.
[OK, I’m exaggerating a bit, but lordy the woman drives fast.]
He’s too ADD to stand still for long. So when he’s getting ready for work, he’ll travel throughout the house. If he’s in the family room when he’s done combing his hair, he’ll just plop the brush down there. So when I go to brush my hair, I can’t find it. He now has THREE toothbrushes because instead of hunting down the two others he’s abandoned, he’ll just open a new one. (He’d have more but I threatened to shove the next new one he opens right up his throat.)
His idea of cleaning up the kitchen is to put all the hand washables in the sink, fill up the sink with soapy water, and then to place a washcloth across the surface of one of the items. Thanks, hon!
After he’s done mowing the lawn, he’ll take off his grassy shoes and socks and leave them on the deck. I used to shake them off and bring them inside. No more. It rained yesterday and soaked his gym shoes. Oh well.
LOL
You remind yourself that if he were talking about things you do that drive him nuts, he’d be talking about this exact same issue, except from the perspective that you’re all the time riding his ass for focusing on his driving instead of watching for other people in Jeeps to wave at them. Then you take a slow deep breath, count to 10 in your head, and let it go.
There are a handful of things my husband does that would probably bug the shit out of me if I thought about them much…but there are probably 2-3 times that many things I do that probably drive him nuts, or would if he thought about them much. So we don’t think about them much, preferring instead to give our mental real estate to each other’s good points.
I love my husband, but he’s got severe absent-minded professor syndrome, so this is where a large portion of my annoyance with him comes. The lack of attention to detail or getting distracted and wandering off bit can get annoying, but he’s pretty awesome otherwise.
Are you sure you’re not married to my husband’s biological father? I’ve got some of these behaviors fixed, but there’s no way to eliminate the constant “little random messes” that show up around the house. It’s like we have a Clutter Fairy.
I love my husband dearly, but he has no clue whatsoever as to where things go. He can take them out of their places, but to put them back in the right spot is a miracle in and of itself. Case in point: pens always go in one of two places: in the pen caddy I’ve got at my desk, or somewhere on his desk. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve spent 15 minutes or more looking for a pen/screwdriver/batteries/etc. Mind you, I can’t remember where he chose to store the batteries 80% of the time, but really, we have about 20 screwdrivers in this house somewhere, and if I don’t make sure one of them is findable by me, I have no idea whatsoever where he puts them because it’s almost never the same place twice.*
We both do this, but the husband does it a little more often. I adjusted the shelves in the fridge so we could store wine bottles in there, but set one side so that it’s significantly higher and meant for shorter jars and leftovers and such. If I don’t continually move shorter stuff to that shelf, the tall shelf gets loaded up with little odds and ends because it’s the first place he sees to put something.
I play hide and seek with the laundry on laundry days, which means emptying the laundry bins, looking at the pile of clothes next to the bed, checking the bathrooms for discarded clothes, and under his desk for the pile of Incredibly Dirty Socks.
*On the “nothing has a permanent home” issue: this leads to “Honey, do you know where my [things] are?” and me wondering where the hell he put them this time. I also am frequently asking where the dishcloth and scissors are, even though we have multiples of both items. When one pair disappears, we go hunting for another pair; we have about five pairs of scissors, and only two at any given time are in a “found” location. Don’t get me started on how many times he’ll bypass the “you can use these on anything” scissors and head straight for the fabric scissors… :mad:
I HAVE managed to curb this behavior, somewhat. When I find that my good fabric scissors are no longer suitable for fabric, I get dressed and inform my husband that we’re going to go get some scissors right now. And I pick out the nicest pair of fabric scissors that the quilt shop offers. These are usually the most expensive. I insist that he pay for the scissors out of his fun money account. I also insist on getting a couple of little toys (quilt shops have the nicest toys!) and hint that he should pay for the toys, too. Sometimes this works.
It’s taken me a while to get him to understand that he should change into old, worn out clothes before he undertakes a dirty, messy task. When I was growing up, everyone in the family had clothes for church going and other dress up events, everyday clothes which were suitable for office work or school, and play clothes, although the adults called them putter clothes. Putter clothes were what the adults used to do housework or chores or just relax in. Oh, and we all had pajamas and bathrobes. And Og help the child who didn’t change from school clothes into play clothes before going out to get gloriously muddy in the back yard. I just asked Bill (without telling him why I was asking) whether he had play clothes and school clothes, and he said no, he just had clothes.
12 years of marriage here… I’ve got a few.
When he washes the dishes, he fails to wash the HANDLES of things. Like the handles of greasy knives that were used to carve a pork roast, the handles of pots and pans used to create a 5-course meal, etc. So when I go to pull out one of the carving knives to cut up an apple for The Boy, I’m greeted with a nasty, greasy knife handle that I have to wash AGAIN before I use it.
Asks my opinion on waaaaay too many things. In the mall parking lot: “Should we park over here or over there?”. I. Really. Don’t. Give. A. Damn. Just. Park. The. Damn. Car. If I have an opinion about the parking for some reason like it’s way too hot/too cold/my leg hurts/whatever, I will vocalize it before we are parked. “Should we bring 2 bottles of water or 3 to the pool?” Use your best guess, I’m pretty sure we’re not going to dehydrate. Ugh. “Do you want The Boy to have a snack before we leave or should we bring it in the car?” He’s YOUR boy, too, take a guess and no matter what the outcome I’m sure the Earth will continue to rotate on its axis.
OK, we’ve sat and talked about this for the last ten minutes, after I sat and wracked my brains for ten minutes before that. I think over the course of eleven years, we’ve broken each other of every really irritating habit. I can remember things, like the incessant toenail picking, but that went out of the window about six or seven years ago. Similarly my tendency to be over-critical is now fully controlled by “you’re being critical again” “shit, sorry”. I’ve only thought of one - tailgating, and the fact that only my driving can ever be commented on so I’m not allowed to mention the fact that I’m actually frightened by how close we are to that enormous juggernaut in the pouring rain, etc. That’s pretty much it, though, and since I almost always drive, I don’t have to put up with it much.
He drives me bonkers with his method of telling stories/anecdotes: There is no such thing as a short story in his world. Everyone’s first and last name is vastly important. Their location. What s/he was wearing. The menu served at a barbecue. Even if this person was someone with whom he shared a PE class in seventh grade, and neither of us will ever see again… Just make up a name! It doesn’t matter! Get on with it! (I understand that his job makes this attention to detail very important, but come on!) Worse, though, is that he starts a story, and pauses it about 10 times because he’s also surfing the net, reading his e-mail, and returning a text at the same time. Even if I’ve stood up to indicate that I’m on my way to do something else… aaargh!
I drive him nuts by procrastinating. Really, we both procrastinate a lot, but I am definitely the worst offender. And I can be a little bit of a control freak: no, I don’t really want him to unpack those last four boxes, because later he’ll ask where to find those items and I’ll have no clue. (Of course, he then uses selective listening. “Please don’t wash MY clothes for me” becomes “Don’t wash any clothes” in his mind. Heck, I would be thrilled if he did his own laundry, but I don’t want him to ruin any more of my stuff - bras don’t go in the dryer, silk sweaters don’t go in the wash with new blue towels, etc.)
But at least we’ve learned to mostly live with each other’s driving styles. (He drives like a cop, and multitasks like crazy. I drive too fast, but pretty conservatively - no tailgating, take my foot off the gas and roll up on stop lights, no phone or texts while driving - but I tend to cut right turns a bit short and scrub the curb sometimes.) We’re both safe enough, though and mostly shut up while the other drives…
Boyfriend tailgates all. The damned. Time. He’s getting better about it, but sometimes I still have to remind him that he is not, in fact, on Top Gear. He’s taking a physics class next year, so maybe he’ll come to understand why tailgating is a bad idea, but who knows.
Okay I thought of one. I’ll be in the middle of a sentence, and he’ll wander away. Sometimes I don’t realize that he’s wandered away until I look over for an answer, and he’s not there. It’s easier to keep in mind that he’s not trying to ignore me or piss me off once I’ve calmed down, but it’s really irritating when he does it.
Silly! You’re supposed to sew him a set of play clothes out of the draperies, using your new sewing scissors!
My girlfriend constantly asks me questions she already knows the answer to. This drives me nuts.
Here is a made-up but not uncommon exchange:
Me: “Did you get a chance to call Pentunia today?”
Her: “Well, I was going to call her after lunch, then…”
Interrupting Third Person: “Hey! Did you watch ‘Glee’ last night?”
Her: “Yeah, I thought it was OK.”
Me: “So, did you get a chance to call Pentunia?”
Her: “But that last dance number was awesome!”
ITP: “Oh yeah, I loved that!”
Me: “Did you get a chance to call Petunia?”
Her (fed up with my barrage of questions): “NOOOOO!!!”
mmm
It drives me nuts when I am expected to keep an active mental inventory of the pantry/fridge and sock drawer and to be able to describe in 3D the whereabouts of his hearts current desire.
That with a good dose of twitchiness, the full throttle/hard braking race, ok we’re up to 3…
Oh this, it absolutely drives me bats when my wife does it.