Do you and your SO have any rituals related to crankiness?

No. I usually make it obvious by being really quiet and distant. I’m pretty silly and talkative so when I’m neither, it’s an obvious sign.

My hunny can always tell when I’m in one of my moods. I usually raise my eyebrows and look anywhere but in his eyes. This is his cue to do his usual baby talk until I break and give a little smile. He’ll say something like “Oooh is somebody grumpyyy? Whatsamatta babyyy? Do you need hugs?” And he’ll get this stupid goofy look on his face, come over to me and give me a hug or tickle me. That’s usually enough to get me to lighten up. If I’m really upset, he bribes me with the ultimate weapon…food :)

When one of us starts to launch off into a rant (he about Lost and me about a former co-worker), we both learned to say, “I will listen to you, but don’t expect me to recall the details.” It worked like a charm.

I applaud your sister and her husband for coming up with their personal (and humorous) signal to each other to take a step back from the situation and personal emotions. A friend once told me that she and her husband used to roll their eyes at each other until their daughter picked up the habit.

Oink!

Most people make funny noises or take unusual expressions for their face.

When i’m cranky it usually passes very fast.
[ it’s a short life to stay cranky ]

If it’s something very serious, we both tend to go silent and distant for a short while. We always talk about it afterwards though.

If it’s something minor, I usually do something silly like this to lighten the situation. It almost always works :)

We used to press E.T.‘s tummy to make him talk (until he stopped working a couple years ago). How that started:
About 8 years ago (whenever it was that the film industry re-showed E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial), we had bought a stuffed E.T. that said a few phrases from the movie and its tummy/finger would light up. We had been arguing about the house her parents had bought for the daughters to all live in (east indian cultural family) until they were all married off. To satisfy her parents, temporarily, she moved into this house with her two sisters for a few months. We were both upset (in my apartment) and I said something along the lines of “I just want you to come home” ..my foot was on the coffee table and so was E.T. ..I went to put my foot down and hit E.T., to which he said “Home, home, home!”. At that point we both started laughing uncontrollably and the situation was defused. We always had him out, afterwards, using him as a crankiness defuser.

In a humorous voice, we each say to the other, “Are you bitching at me?”, with raised eyebrows. That usually gets the bitch-er to stop for a second and re-think the direction it’s going in. Usually the immediate answer is “No. Well, maybe just a little.” Then we can move on from there in a more productive way.

No.I like to ad-lib.
I gave him a rock for lunch before.He got the hint XD

When my husband is cranky from lack of sleep, I leave him alone and nag him to take a nap. Haha. I just realized what I wrote. When I say leave him alone, I mean I don’t ask him to asnwer any questions or carry in a conversation. If he is cranky because he has not eaten, I tell him to eat, he tells me he is not hungry, I tell him he is an idiot. Something like that. One of the things that drves me about my husband is he does not plan his meals so he won’t be starving and he will push himself into exhaustion to get something done when it is unnecessary.

If I am cranky I am not sure what I do? If I am whiney my husbamd call me Lucy sometimes. That makes him Ricky. Yes he is Hispanic.

GF: “Wow rebbel, i went to the mall this afternoon and guess what…, they still had those nice jeans i wanted so bad!!”
rebbel: “huhhuh…”
GF: “Hey, they still had one pair of my beloved jeans, isn’t that fantastic?!!”
rebbel: ”huh-huhhh”

That, i am sad to say, is my ritual.
Working on it, really.

My fiancee is Drama #1 and I’m Drama #2 so we have to work really hard to get around our bad moments or days and nip them in the bud before annoying everyone else around us. We are really good at radiating crankiness even when calm so we try to use love and humor to change it up. He’ll hold me a minute too long while petting my hair and say, “oh, you’re all crankie… poor sweetie” and I’ll often give him a quick kiss on the cheek and say, “poor cranky hard working man”. That sort of thing.

Oh my god, if he did the pig noises, I’d kill him. No we have no rituals. We are very good about saying ‘Look, like right now I’m really pissy. I’m sorry if I come off grumpy’ or ‘Do not talk to me right now, I need some space.’

@Simone_De_Beauvoir – Thank you for saying that! I was beginning to feel like a weirdo. If anyone did something cutesy at me when I’m grumpy, it would only serve to make me grumpier. And tickling or poking? That person would get a slug in the arm or a face full of bitchy!

@tedibear Ya!

The pig noises would make me want to punch the other person in throat.