How to do you handle these situation? You ask your partner to do something and he doesn’t. Remind him? – he then feels accused of not being quick enough and everything must be on my terms. Not reminding him and doing it myself – again, I cannot wait for him to do it in his own pace. Kind of frustrating.
I asked my partner nicely a week ago to put two bags of empty bottles in the car in the morning when he leaves to work. So we can take these to a collection point someday (it is somewhat silently agreed solution – none of us really likes to take the bottles to the collection point, so the bags just stay in the apartment or car for weeks, however in car they do not get in the way; we usually take the bottles to the car together). It seemed like a small task – he goes out to work by car every morning.
So a week has passed, he has still not done it. We could have done it at weekend together, but I forgot (yep, my fault).
So this morning, I asked could he please take the bottles to the car. He says no. So I got a bit frustrated and said “Well fine, let them be, I’ll take care of them myself”. Then he got frustrated and said “It’s not that easy to just take the bags in the mornings, but fine I can take one of those bags”. And grabbed one bag out of the two and left.
And now I’m spending my time thinking who was wrong and how to handle it politely. So how do I handle it now? I know I should have not been frustrated this morning, but I was, because could he not told me earlier that this task will be unmanagable to him? Could he not taken the bags to the car at some other point? I want to now just take the remaining bottles to the collection point (sacrificing half an hour or more of my work day to do so). Or wait for him to arrive at evening with the car and then just take the other bag to the car myself. But I guess then I’m being passive-aggressive, right? If I raise the topic at the evening, then I am a nag?
Such things do not happen that often, because mostly I’ll just let it go or do it myself. Some things he does really nicely. But other times such little incidents just feel like impossible situations and I do not know how to handle those so that we are both heard and treated nicely and so on.
Otherwise we are good. He is just plain lazy with such things.
Please help 