My ex stopped talking to me for a month once because I didn’t thank him for washing some dishes…enthusiastically enough. I did say thanks…just not while hugging and kissing him and getting down on the floor and kissing his feet for washing a few dishes for maybe the third time in 15 years.
The problem was…I really enjoyed him not talking for that month. Even though it was embarrassing in front of my family and other parents at school functions. even though it confused and angered the kids. After a week of his foolishness,(and long before I knew WHY he was doing it) I began to enjoy not having to include him in any conversations, or to ask his opinion, or to get permission from him. He got angrier and angrier, but I was totally enjoying myself for about two weeks. He couldn’t yell at me because he wasn’t speaking to me.
Turns out he was having an affair, and this was one of the ways he was trying to make me into a bitch so he could leave with his head held high, in his warped opinion. If he got me mad enough, he’d be “justified” in leaving such a bitch. But I just happily went along, and he got madder and madder because I wasn’t giving him ammunition. He didn’t know I was enjoying the quiet!
Oh, this thread is fantastic. ShirleyUjest just about killed me with the floor mopping story.
The stupidest fight I can recall is the time my husband and I got into a very heated argument over whether Green Day’s album American Idiot contained political criticism against the Bush administration in specific.
This is stupid because we are both liberal and we both love that album. He had no reason not to agree with me. He just kept insisting that Billie Joe and the gang may have written their opus to apply to any historical period–that this album which was released in 2005 could just as easily have been referring to Vietnam or WWII. ‘‘The bottom line is, there’s no way we can know what they intended.’’
There is such an abundance of evidence in my favor it’s hardly worth outlining my argument.
We got so into it we had to pull into a drive-thru parking lot and hash it out. There were excoriating pronouncements and tears of anguish.
About three months later American Idiot came on the radio and he said sheepishly, ‘‘Yeah, I don’t know what I was thinking. Sorry honey.’’
My wife usually takes your role when we play out this scenario. And the disputes arise not just because I’m apathetic, but because if I suggest something she disagrees with I’ll have to argue five minutes to (maybe) get my way. Even if it’s “my turn” to choose.
And if we do go with my suggestion, and things are less than wonderful she will makes frequent unhappy comments.
So, it’s only worth expressing a preference if I feel very strongly about an issue. But food, lodging, family vacations, eh… it’s all good unless it’s over scheduled, and then I’ll just sit in the chaise and read a book.
She comes from a family where doing the “best” thing (like taking the fastest route to the airport) was usually a competition.
Did he genuinely not get it or was he being a smartass? If he was being a smartass, are you sure you’re not my long list sister in law? My husband does this all the time, to the point where I catch on fairly quickly and respond like “SIGH, ok, PLEASE go out and BUY a bulb to put in the spot where the old bulb USED TO BE.”
He genuinely doesn’t get stuff like that. A friend of ours once said in exasperation, “Bathshebaman, you are the most pedantic person I have ever met!”. Which was funny at the time but it’s not so funny when you’re trying to live with it and have to expend valuable time and energy wording stuff just right so that he does get it, yea, "SIGH, ok, PLEASE go out and BUY a bulb to put in the spot where the old bulb USED TO BE."
We have a code word now which I am allowed to use when he starts on one of his little pedantic-fits. I say the code word and he has to stop and think. It’s a rule. The code word? Why, it’s “dickhead” of course!
Stupid fights I have participated in have occurred during family time, boating and camping mostly. Usually it gets started because one is a grump and mumbles into his beard vague instructions and then he points instead of mumbling which leads to further bitter confusion about his intents and pisses everyone off. Oh happy camping time, setting up the huge ass dome tent with its many poles that criss cross just so and unloading the car and no one can relax until everything is set up completely.
You wanna see fights over stupid stuff? Watch a couple paddle a tandem canoe, particularly if they are beginners.
I’ve seen em about to kill each other. Needless to say the vast majority of the couples in our paddle club each have their own solo boat, for good reason.
As our past president says “sleep tandem, paddle solo”.