Or are these behaviours fundamentally irritating?

[Annoyedtoomuch]

Name change again as outing.

Please help to give me objective feedback. I’m a pretty patient person - especially with DC but finding DP really irritating.

In a 15 year relationship with one DC (middle childhood). I am finding DPs behaviour utterly irritating. I’m finding myself screaming into pillows and digging my nails into my own hand just to release some tension. I err on the side of being too critical and am trying to not to be - so keep it in. DP can’t cope with me even letting them know I’m feeling irritated - they feel judged and hurt and get really angry. They say I’m intolerant but I’m not sure if I am or if they are just difficult to live with…

They:

• talk loudly on the phone whilst walking around the house - even sitting down to dinner whilst talking on the phone.
• long lectures/speeches on a subject of their choice without asking you anything. Im talking a good 15 plus mins constant talk with no feedback from me.
• telling me I’m wrong when I know I’m right. Recent example - they could smell a certain smell. Told me I had sprayed the thing that makes the smell - I said I hadn’t. They said ‘you must have’. I had to say it about three times before they accepted it. Another example is discussing a trip. Them wanting to squeeze in ‘X’. Me saying we dont have time. Them insisting we do until I spell it out how long the journey will take etc.
• going into cupboards/drawers etc and leaving them open.
• ‘storing’ stuff on the floor (e’g. Clothes, books, electronics) rather than in cupboards or even just a table or chair.
• sitting with shoes on in the house then tucking foot up under other leg so outdoor shoe is on sofa/chair cushion.
• in arguments or when telling DC off, goes on and on and on. Repeats self. Brings up past misdemeanours (in his eyes). Like half an hour is nothing.

I could go on but won’t. Am I just intolerant or would most people find these things difficult to live with? I’m not perfect and I’m sure I have irritating habits too, we all do, but are these beyond the norm or do I need to get a grip?

YABU - I am intolerant and need to find inner peace

YANBU- those behaviours would irritate most rationale humans with perhaps a few exceptions.

Thank you in advance

I'd find most of your list intolerable (except for maybe the shoe thing).

I do not advocate 'tit for tat', BUT, I have found that sometimes you have to SHOW someone what they are doing is disrespectful or annoying (men are apparently more visual than us [hmm[ ).

So arrange with a friend to phone you, and walk around the house talking really really loudly. Try to follow him around while you do this, but pretend you don't even notice him. Like I say, sometimes, mirroring their behaviour can get through to someone.

The same with the insisting he has done something when you know he hasn't. Just insist for a while until he gets a bit annoyed at having to repeat himself, and I think after a while he will realise that that is what he is doing to you.

Obviously, these things only work with a normal 'good' guy with some irritating habits. Not an abusive bully, but I had to do one or two of these types of things at the beginning of my marriage and now they are sorted. And before I get slated, they were not major things, just the odd annoying things that he just couldn't 'SEE' IFYSWIM.

Not sure how to deal with the lecture-type talking. My DH can go on a bit, but he doesn't talk 'AT' me so I can live with that. He also leaves cupboard doors open everywhere, and I'm okay with that too.

Lecturing the kids. Unnecessary and depending on the form it takes could be actually damaging to them. Shit like this is why I'm scared to try stuff I don't know for sure I'll succeed at - if I knew not succeeding would result in a lengthy discussion of every little misstep I made, since birth to the present day, with detours for examples of historical figures who made the same mistake and how this affected world events then I'd be sitting down, shutting up, and doing fuck all. It's unnecessary, domineering and excessive.

I agree with this. My mum used to go on and on and on when telling us off.

DH and I have a saying now: “When the nail’s in, stop hammering!” We’re telling the other one to pack it in if we’re going on too much.

Oh no!! Cross posted, so obviously my suggestion of slightly annoying him with questioning him won't work

Ooh, tell him to use it then and you take his chair?

Yep my DH does all this. We have had a ladder in the bedroom for a year. I take it out he puts it back as he is doing some work in the attic. Drills etc charging. Clothes always out in bedroom and monologues can go on forever. I tend to go to bed.

I wonder if the intensity of your emotion is accurate? Digging nails into hands and screaming? Doesn't sound a reasonable response to these actions.

I may have missed it but have you actually done anything about any of it? Expressed annoyance? Gently told them what the issue is? Or do you just stand back and accept it?

Remember: You can NEVER change another person. You can try and they may change for a short period of time but eventually they will revert back. You can punish, cry, scream, withdraw, threaten to leave etc and you will never change someone. So you have a few options:

Accept that they are like that - NOT condone or give in, but acknowledge that you can't change another person

Do something about it. Approach them calmly and explain what you feel and why

Stay miserable.

Good luck

He's a bully OP.

You cannot question nor have an opinion different to him without him getting angry at you.

He's an abusive bully.
It's as simple as that.

Screaming into a pillow?
I can believe it, but so bloody bad for you.

You earn more and do more?

Your life sounds like a living hell.

No one made vows for that.

Stop giving this awful man your future.

Oh and as for the waiting while he eats mid sentence? A moron.

I am hearing a load of non-communication in your original post.

Why does anyone need to be "right" about things? And can you (and he) acknowledge that maybe you aren't right. Or that people have different perspectives and don't HAVE to be right all the time?

Just curious :P

This is why I choose to live alone... Yanbu

Why are you tolerating this behaviour?
These things are obviously upsetting and annoying you and having a real impact on your relationship.

Here's my suggestion -

First you need to make your feelings plain in a broad way such as 'I am unhappy with the way you treat me' or 'I feel that you don't respect me' - something that is true for you and underlies your irritation.
Then you need to learn to speak up about each behaviour individually very clearly and state what you need. In the chair example you actually needed to say 'I don't want to use this chair' rather than coming up with excuses.
If he is lecturing you need to interrupt and say 'Are you interested in my point of view?'
If he is on the phone touch him to get his attention and say 'please take your call somewhere else'.
You need to be direct and clear.
I appreciate this can feel unnatural and a bit scary but you need to do something different to get the change you want.
If he moans or accuses you of being rude try 'well this situation is now so bad it is affecting how I feel about you and our relationship.'
Short statements should force him to listen to what you are actually saying.

Worth a try?

Probably in a little bit if a clipped tone as I don’t want to use the chair, I want an ergonomic one for WFH and I’m feeling pressure to not buy a new one

You're the main earner and you're not asking him to go without his dinner so that you can have a chair that is suitable for your needs. Not something frivolous that you just want. Does he feel that in buying a new one you're rubbing his face in it that you earn more than him?

I think he just has this ‘my life and opinions are important’ baseline.

Do you think that has anything to do with you being the main earner? He's trying to big himself up and make himself important, although going totally the wrong way about it? If he had very critical parents he may be feeling that somehow he's failed and isn't important here either and is trying to make himself feel better?

I'm not excusing him, I'm just trying to think round things. Whatever his reasons, you shouldn't have to live like this. His early life has made him unable to take even the mildest criticism without going off the deep end. You can only live with that for so long. You may at times be passive aggressive or intolerant and that's something to work on. But maybe the passive aggression is because you've learned that direct communication only gets you yelled at and belittled. By all means recognise your own faults, but don't let that become taking all the blame onto yourself.

Most of your list sounds intolerable to me (the lectures), some I wouldn't care about (the mess).

But what I'm wondering is how you got all the way to getting married and having kids with someone you find so annoying?

We all have annoying habits and there should be plenty of time in the first couple of years of a relationship to work out which ones you can live with because you love so much else about your partner, and which ones you absolutely cannot live with. The latter necessitate either a change of behaviour or an end of the relationship.

I don't really believe that a man with mansplaining pub bore tendencies showed no sign of them when he was younger! Nor a man who is messy.

And if someone you're in a long-term relationship with does develop a new and dealbreakingly annoying habit out of nowhere then you should be comfortable with them to nip it in the bud the first or second time.

I have a DP who doesn't put lids on things properly. It will never not annoy me. I will never stop yelling "LIDS" at him. But ultimately it doesn't matter. I also know that he'd rather I wasn't so slatternly in nature but I assume he's also made his peace with that, while I've improved in 10 years I don't foresee me ever coming round to the notion of "putting things away" rather than "leaving them out where I can see them".

I hear you loud and clear. You do not have his respect as an equal. I always thought I was the controlling mean nagging one but actually its him being manipulative and controlling. Right now we are having a running battle over him barging into partially opened doors and/or slamming them like a teenager (no idea why he can't turn the handle fully before pushing it open, he's had sixty years practice at it). Neigbhours must love him. I am seriously considering my options as I don't know how I will cope for the next 30 years, 20 of them with him retired so 24/7

My god when I first read your list I thought you were talking about your teenagers, apart from the first 2!! Nope all of them would drive me bonkers in a DP! My DP does the walk around the house and talks really loudly, I ask him to go to another room but he does not bring the phone to the table! He also does the lectures that go on and on and on and on and drag up all kinds of irrelevant things!! I am going to try the are we having a conversation or is this a speech line next time! I am tried to explain rationally that everyone just stops listening to him, but he seems to let this fly over his head.

You have all my sympathy OP!

OP, I'd suggest changing the focus from complaining about his problem behaviours, to examining how the two of you resolve conflict.

All relationships include conflict and disagreement, because you are two separate people. But there are healthy and unhealthy ways to deal with conflict, and if you have unhealthy ways, then the relationship is miserable, probably for both of you.

Check out John Gottman's work on relationships in general, and also specifically around conflict: www.gottman.com/blog/managing-vs-resolving-conflict-relationships-blueprints-success/

If you sat down your husband and said this is a make or break issue for you, and you want to work TOGETHER on it (rather than just throwing all the blame on his annoying habits/personality traits), do you think he'd be willing to try?

If he's not willing then I think the relationship is pretty hopeless. But it might be worth giving it a try.

They sound bloody annoying.

Ok the mouldy chair thing. This is a clash of communication styles (or thinking patterns maybe). You expected him to pick up on the inference that the mouldy chair was not what you wanted. Instead you got into an argument over just how mouldy it is. You need to learn to state your position clearly and unambiguously.
"I don't want that chair, it's mouldy and it's not an ergonomic chair. I need an ergonomic chair because I have to sit in it all day."
See? State your position. Don't get into arguments about something that isn't the point. Because it really doesn't matter how mouldy it is, you don't want to use that chair.
You are the one earning, you get what you need to enable you to do that.