:eek: I’d say it goes much better than can be expected for you if you’re in one piece and still married afterward. Never, ever, ever give anyone practical advice about losing weight unless they have explicitly asked for it. This goes triple for spouses/SOs.
Sometimes I do, if I don’t feel like making it one day. But in general, he expects me to it, like it’s one of my assigned chores or something. It’s that attitude that bugs me, more than the actual coffee-making. I’m doing him a favor; he thinks it’s my job, so he takes it for granted.
There’s one thing my SO does that very nearly inspires me to commit murder. Every time he takes a drink – and I do mean *every. Single. Time. * – he lets out a loud (if sub-vocal) “AHHHHHHH!”
sip
AHHHHHH!
sip
AHHHHHH!
sip
AHHHHHH!
Sweet tap-dancing Jeezus, what the fuck IS that?! Does he have some kind of respiratory ailment or something?
Also, he’ll nag me and nag me and nag me to get ready to go someplace, but invariably I end up being the one waiting for him. I’ll be all ready to go, standing at the front door, and that’s when he’ll decide to check his email/make phone calls/start home renovation projects, etc.
And he seems incapable of putting any dishes in the dishwasher – if I didn’t do it, it wouldn’t get done. He’ll put them in the sink and leave them there for days and days, which I find utterly mystifying because the dishwasher is about half an inch to the right.
Absentmindedly popping gum.
Just… don’t.
How did my SO end up at your house?
Oy. Preach it brother.
1 - After using the last of the toilet paper, she gets the new role out, uses what she needs, and sets the new role on the counter. It takes like 5 seconds to place it on the spool, where it belongs, but nooooo…
2 - After grocery shopping I need to have a complete show and tell of every item that she picked up. Apparently she’s afraid that if I don’t see it immediately I might not notice it in the, what, 3 or 4 places we store food.
3 - And it’s a good thing we have more than one television set, because I really don’t want to watch Survivor East Timor, or Dancing with Douches, or Oprah, or Dr. Phil, or well, just about any piece of crap she watches regularly.
Maybe she thinks you’re like my husband, or any number of husbands of people I know, who can’t seem to find the food that we hide in clever hiding places like the fridge and the pantry. 
Can I add one more? Thank you.
My husband is always late. Always. He is overly optimistic about how long it takes to get anywhere, does not allow for delays en route, etc. Something’s 70 miles away? It’ll take an hour to get there. No, it will definitely take MORE than an hour unless you have the ability to go from zero to 70 instantly and never go below that speed until the instant you arrive. I have taken to lying in order to get him out of the house on time.
Turnabout? I’m untidy. Clutter has to be pretty dam bad before it bothers me. My attitude is, if it bothers you, then you fix it. Which makes him hostile. Ever seen somebody cleaning hostilely? Not a pretty sight.
That’s what drives me crazy about it - she does explicitly ask for it.
“My ass is huge, I don’t understand it, I don’t eat that much!”
In most situations, when someone says that they perceive a problem and don’t see a solution, that’s an appropriate time to offer advice. (The only advice I have ever offered is to start paying attention to nutritional information and trying to follow the suggestions for healthy eating in the Canada Food Guide.)
Verbatim conversation, watching “X-weighted” and seeing a nutritionist help someone with meal-planning:
That’s the part that drives me up the wall. If you’re comfortable with the status quo (and there’s no reason she shouldn’t be, IMHO,) then maybe let one day pass without talking about how unhappy you are with it. But if you are unhappy with it, do something besides whinging about it and don’t get upset when someone mentions the obvious first step.
She seems so preoccupied with weight, I just wish she’d either relax about it or make the slightest effort to make informed nutritional choices.
“I don’t get it, I’m so careful!”
“If you were paying attention to the nutritional value of your food, you might be surprised at where your surplus calories come from. You know, with your current routine you’re getting ~1000 calories before 10:00am.”
“Roar!”
My wife makes passive requests. It shouldn’t be a problem – I can generally determine what she really wants, but it still drives me nuts. A typical scenario, the two of us on the couch, the remote closer to my hand than hers:
Her: You can change the channel now, if you want.
Me: Ok, thanks.
I go back to reading my book. Minutes pass.
Her: Aren’t you going to change the channel?
Dammit, no. I’m reading. I have no desire to change the channel, and your request was conditional upon my desire to do so. I would be happy to change the channel for you, or hand the remote to you, but you didn’t ask me!
Another peeve:
Offering things and being upset when they’re accepted.
She has this habit of offering to do things with the expectation that the offer will be declined. If I ever do accept one of these offers, she’ll sulk about it.
Most of the time I notice that the offer isn’t sincere to start with, so it’s not like it counts toward anything. If my psychic abilites fail me from time to time, don’t make a fight out of my acceptance. WTF?
The Ms. is durn near perfect. The only thing that USED to bug me (I’ve learned to deal with it) is that she almost never closes things, particularly food containers. After six months of picking something up, only to have the lid come off in my hand or have it spill all over, I now just make sure that the lid is tight before I handle anything (now going on 15 years). Same thing goes for potato chip bags, sugar containers, a baggie with cheese in it, bread bags, cereal boxes. It’s endless and unfixable and it’s so minor in the grand scheme of her positive impact on my life that I instantly forgive it all.
Like what, for example?
Oooh, yeah. My SO as well:
“Are you hungry?” means “I’m hungry.”
“Do you want to go out to eat?” means “Please let’s go to a restaurant.”
the divemaster will be late to his own funeral.
he has a fixation about not getting out the door! he’ll change the scubakitty water bowl, make sure Her Featheredness has enough bird munchies to last her a week, never mind an evening out, stop to check out the mail on the kitchen table which has been sitting there for at least a day or two at this point – any one of a dozen different things – while i stand and wait patiently. and stand and wait patiently. and stand – well, you get the point. 
drives me UP the freakin’ wall. it doesn’t do any good to point this out to him. he is, will be, and shall **always ** be, LATE.
in fairness, i used to be lot less on time myself many moons ago, but the older i’ve gotten, the more on time or early i’ve become. i know for sure there are two things i do that drive him up the wall: a tendency to repeat myself verbally and absolutely, totally, completely no sense of direction.
as an engineer, these things make *him * crazy. he’s totally incapable of understanding how it is i don’t know north from south. and being a linear thinker, the repetition habit is akin to chinese water torture for him.
You just described my dad to a T. Except for the video games. I have no idea how he actually spends his days but he’s had very simple projects that he’s been supposed to do for over ten years, I’m talking things that he could do in less than half a day if he would ever do them, and he hasn’t done them.
My husband is by far the most wonderful man I’ve ever known. However, I now know that when he offers to help me or agrees to help after I’ve solicited his assistance, that translates not to, “Sure what do you want me to do and when?” Instead, this really means, “Sure, when I’m good and ready to do it,” or “Mmmmm… Maybe.”
I don’t think he’s consciously trying to screw me over, but he just procrastinates until finally the mess pisses me off so much I have to do it myself. If I want him to actually agree to do something AND do it, I need to make sure I’m asking during the correct alignment of the stars and planets, then specify exactly when I expect him to help me or complete the project. It doesn’t matter how large or small it is.
Also, he has this thing with the recycling - even though our city does not require it, he must sort everything, must break down all boxes, take off all tape, remove all stapes, etc., etc. It doesn’t matter if someone else will do this for him. It doesn’t matter that it can take him more than an hour to do this sometimes. He still must do it and takes it very seriously - the trash can’t go out unless it’s been ascertained that no recycle-able material remains; the recycling can’t go out until everything has been carefully sorted, broken down, tape removed, blah blah blah.
This is one of those things that rears its ugly head during an argument once every month or so when I start feeling overwhelmed by the chaos that is our house.
He’s pathologically early to pretty much everything. Example: he’s agreed with a friend to meet at our neighborhood winery at 2:00pm. Cool. It takes about 15 minutes (generously - usually more like 12) to get to the winery. That means he wants to leave our house at 1:40pm cuz, you know, he could encounter giant frogs en route and needs that 5 minute cushion to summon the giant frog police. Fine, so far.
I get ready to go with the 1:40 departure time in mind. At 1:30, he’s standing around at the foot of the stairs sighing loudly and looking distressed. Again, let’s review: it’s a 12 minute trip. Our friends will be late, or at least will not be at all put out if we’re 5 minutes late, and I’m not even suggesting we’re going to be late. No! Lateness is very bad! But hell, he’s down there by the front door fretting at 1:30. And getting mad at me for making us “late”. So we get there at 1:47 and our friends arrive at 2:10, so there’s 23 minutes of hanging around aimlessly.
I think it’s a form of social anxiety. Or maybe he’s just weird.
Oh, and my annoying trait? Apparently I tell him things more than once. Also, apparently sometimes I don’t tell him things at all, which I guess is what I get for trying not to repeat myself and relying on my non-existent memory.
Well, I hate when he puts my mail in a pile somewhere I never look and forgets to tell me. And he doesn’t pay attention to how much is in the general expenses account and has gotten us overdraft charged even when we have money.
He also seems to have no concept of an indoor voice or a private conversation so he often embarrasses me when we’re grocery shopping or whatever. But the motormouth is helpful at parties.
Oh, and his snoring sounds like a chainsaw. But he’s a big sweetie.
“Would you like some help with the dishes?”
“Sure, there’s a lot tonight, you can dry if you want to.”
“Oh, but I wanted to watch a bit of TV.”
“Would you like a glass of juice?”
“Yeah, that’d be nice - I’m thirsty.”
“But I wanted to finish the jug.”
“Do you want some help with dinner?”
“Could you dice the eggplant?”
“Ugh! I hate to cut vegetables.”
I don’t understand this behaviour at all. It’s not an issue, really - because my stock answer is “Nah, I got it under control.” But I don’t get the point of offering something if you’re going to balk if the offer is accepted. 
(To be clear, the distribution of labour is pretty fair in our household, one might get the impression that she’s lazy if you’re just looking at the above - not so.)