We do the German thing and have separate covers. See, I grew up in Germanic style, in the bedroom at night the window gets cracked for fresh air. Only times we slept in the winter with the window shut was if it was snowing hard enough to blow into the bedroom. mrAru is from Fresno CA, a high desert area and he is sort of like a lizard, he is happiest if it is about 90 all the time [or hotter :eek:] while I am comfortable at 60-65 wearing a tshirt and shorts. [Well, unfortunately I have been doing the hot flash thing and the cold flash thing so I swing between roasting my ass off and sweating, and 5 minutes later wraping up in a heavy comforter trying to keep warm. Baffles my doctor too, so I just endure it. I figure it is an endocrine issue.]
Our issue - he chews ice. I have fillings and the idea of chewing ice makes my mouth hurt, let alone actually chewing ice and really getting the pain. No matter what, he will chew ice so I forbid him to have drinks with ice in them in the car or when we are sitting together. he can drink nice safe hot coffee. But hey, he spent 20 years in the navy where I think they bunker with coffee =)
He would probably complain about my refrigerating the bedroom winter or summer
If I am taking a vacation day off of work, that is not an opportunity for you to hand me a “honeydew” list as long as my arm. I took the day off because I have stuff I want to do!
My wife and I also do the “comforter” thing, sort of. She gets hot when she sleeps and likes it to be nice and cold in the bedroom, so she will crack the window open and have the ceiling fan going. And then I wake up because I’m freezing and I have to go rummaging around for blankets. What drives me crazy about this the most is that she wears flannel pajamas to bed. Hey, you know what, if you’re hot, maybe try wearing something to bed that isn’t going to make you sweat. But that’s another argument I’m not going to win.
“Don’t let a suitcase full of stinky cheese become your giant fork and spoon.” I love that episode.
OTOH, there’s the story of the old man complaining about his wife and telling his friends he’s going to file for divorce. One by one, they praise his wife’s qualities and try to convince him he’s crazy to think about divorcing her. The man takes off his loafer and says, “Here. Tell me where this shoe pinches my foot.”
As long as it is consistent, I don’t care. I’m a from-the-top type but there’s nothing wrong with from-the-bottom… as long as it isn’t random and you don’t have to play spin-the-spool every time you want a few feet for something.
The first “nice” meal I made for her was osso bucco. She loved it, right up to the part where she found out it was veal, something she had gone 20 or so years without eating (I didn’t know).
We discussed things rationally. She drinks milk, the excess male calves borne to keep the cow lactating need dealt with, etc. Eventually I found a source for “humane raised veal” that cost way more than regular veal. She is still uncomfortable with the concept of eating veal (though she loves the taste).
There’s too many too list but alot revolve around being in the car.
She’s a terrible navigator and, when I get off-course, will nag that I don’t know where I’m going, which is true because she has the the address, directions, map, GPS, etc… in her purse.
Then she’ll blame me for not paying attention to where I’m going … except I don’t know where I’m going because the address, directions, map, GPS, etc… is back in her purse again.
Then there’s the battle for the volume of the radio, thank god for steering wheel controls!
And then the hot and cold flashes of the climate control.
And my pet peeve… reading the newspaper out loud to me… every article! Which then leads us back to the stereo volume dispute!
You might be surprised to find out that he actually likes doing those things. I would consider those kinds of home improvement type things almost a kind of hobby.
We don’t argue much any more. We’ve already had most of the arguments we could ever had, so we don’t need to talk about those things. For example, we do not discuss politics. Ever. I already know where he stands and vice versa. The chance that anyone’s position will be changed by further discussion is somewhere between slim and none (and Slim just left town).
My husband has an incredible talent for coming home just as I’m watching the last five or ten minutes of something - I don’t mean to be rude, and I am happy to see him, but could the discussions of everything wait for five minutes until this movie is finished?
And making fun of what I’m watching is not cool. :mad:
Are you some kind of monster, putting stamps on envelopes upside down?
You must never follow the news. Each and every year about tax time, there’s a story about how some newspaper or tv station gives the same set of facts to somewhere between 15 and 40 professional tax preparers, and generally only 2 or 3 of them get the right tax figure.
Your confidence has roughly a 90% chance of being misplaced.
I don’t think that my wife is a terrible navigator, but this is one of our issues. In her defense, I am a terrible navigator. I could get lost in my own neighborhood. My wife isn’t necessarily a terrible navigator, but she has a low tolerance for just how bad I am at directions and trying to get to places. Things will start off fine and then go to hell when I start getting confused and lost. Luckily she will still know where we are, but she will get frustrated, erroneously believing that I know which way to go and say something to the effect of ‘you know which way to go’…So when I take the wrong off ramp…
Seriously, I am terrible at directions. When I watched Band of Brothers I felt empathy for Herbert Sobel. I truly believe that if I were a general in WWII I would have somehow invaded Bolivia under the mistaken impression that I was trying to liberate France…
To go about this from the reverse angle, one thing that I do that my wife knows she cannot change, is over qualifying stuff. She knows that I know what she means, yet I over qualify my answer for some bizarre reason. This has sprung up at work. My boss would ask me if I was sure of the numbers on my spreadsheet. I can’t quite recall what I said in response, but it was something to the effect of ‘I’m pretty sure’. She wanted me to say that I was ‘sure’ or ‘confident’ or something to indicate that I was reasonably sure that what I was giving her was correct. I knew this. She knew this, yet I could not for the life of me say this. Instead I hedge for some reason because I was not 100% sure. So one time I bring her the spreadsheet and she asks if I’m sure about the numbers. I waffle or whatever and she takes a look at the spreadsheet and repeats ‘are your sure’? This pings my radar as weird and I take the printed out spreadsheet back from her and recheck all of my numbers. I take it back to her and almost the same thing ensues.
Needless to say I know this is an irritating feature of my personality, but I cannot seem to help it. My wife, bless her, has accepted this - but she still tries to battle it occasionally.
That colds are caused by viruses, not changes in temperature. I understand that he gets a cold seasonally (that is, pretty much every spring and fall). These are not caused by a change in pressure or temperature, but rather, probably by some allergen - he should get that checked out and stop insisting that he gets a cold every time the weather changes. No, you do not. You do not get a cold because the weather changes. Period.
He might slowly be coming around on this. Slowly. However, I’ll admit that I’m a bit mystified as to why, if it is allergies, his cold only lasts a week, week and a half or so. Is this possible?
The argument that I will never win is about childrearing. My husband is getting much, much better, but the expectations he has had of our children in the past have been completely out of whack. He was convinced our son had a disability when he wasn’t reading by age 3. No amount of research would sway him.
Finally I had to drag him into the pediatrician to have my position reiterated and took him to preschool to observe the other kids before he’d finally believe me that he was doing just fine. The thing is, with things he feels very passionately about, he argues with rhetorical, general questions:
“Well, don’t I deserve to have expectations?”
“Don’t you want our son to excel?”
“I want so much for our children. Should I give up my hopes for them?”
Ugh. Questions like those are such a quagmire and so damn dramatic. I’ve learned that it’s smarter to sit down with him, give him the data and let him come to his own conclusions while trying to make sure he and the kids don’t get into a situations where this might come up. It’s ridiculous.
I actually LOVE that he expects so much. He wouldn’t if he didn’t think our kids could delivery. But it’s too much pressure on them at their age, which is something he has trouble understanding.
This. Plus boxes of notes from high school. Plus every single Christmas and Birthday card she’s ever received. Plus boxes and boxes of various papers.
This is how junk mail is handled in our house:
put on dining room table
move to chair (because something good might be in there)
move to piano bench
move back to dining room table (to look at later)
Repeat steps 1-4
Put in box and stick in garage.
ETA: We are currently storing boxes of credit card sales pitches in our garage, while the car sits in the driveway in the rain. And after years and years, I know there is NOTHING I can do about this.
My dear one has a unique skill, a superpower really - every statement made to me or question posed to me contains a correction directed at me, as if the statement or question were framed by a silent {you are wrong}. I really wish I could provide a meaningful example, but the surgical skill that is used is so subtle that I am constantly off (and on) guard and am not in state to record the precise wording and phrasing in the moment. It is really quite impressive.
However, by far the most button-pushing argument-inducing scenario is when there is a subject (anything) that I have decades of experience with, or deep learning in, or a natural affinity for and she has frankly no personal experience or knowledge of. This lack of personal experience or knowledge does not prevent her from publicly and vocally contradicting me and pointing out where I am mistaken, and that whatever I am saying on the subject is not worthy. I just can’t let these slide - so, argument it is!
Really dear? So, you have never seen that movie that I wrote a paper on, or been to that place where I used to live, but I am incorrect in what I said about it? Huh, well, how about that!
