Which is the most annoying habit of your partner?

He has what I call a “creative interpretation of time”.

The words “I’ll be back shortly” will be inscribed on his tombstone.

I’m now divorced but, during my marriage my exes most annoying habit was he was a major passive aggressive, getting him to commit, follow through and communicate in a clear and direct manner was like pulling teeth. Hence the distinguished honor of “ex” and the catalyst for my lifelong loathing of passive aggressive types. I am an expert in the ways these people show up, or don’t show up, should I say. haha
From passive aggressive sighing, hostile procrastination, eye rolling, “forgetting” ( classic PA trait ), the list goes on. If ever I could kill someone with my bare hands it would be a PA type.

Everything has to be passive-aggressive.
There’s almost no such thing as discussing a problem calmly or logically.
Problems have to be fights. It tires me.

P-A #2
There’s no planning ahead.
I asked on Thursday if we were going to visitation for a casual friend on Friday.
“Probably.”
More than jeans, you think?
“Hadn’t thought about it.”
Friday comes, we’re going, and I’m ready.
Then we’re not going.
Then we are.
We go.
“I’m really glad we went.”
Well, duh.

@ibstubro OMG…lets get married! lol

Telling me to do something relatively important while walking out the room, wait…what!?!

Jumping into the middle of a conversation she has been having with me in her head and expecting me to know what she is going on about.

Fortunately, over the years I have developed the ability to do so to a great extent

Well, my hubs is actually working on his PA shit.

The thing that is the most annoying at this time is when we watch a movie for the 2nd+ time (it never happens the first time we watch a movie,) and every time it comes to a funny part he laughs like he never heard it before.. Then he and glances over his shoulder at me to see if I’m laughing too. He does it Every. Single. Time.
I feel like I’m under scrutiny for some reason. Maybe he thinks he’s the only one who gets the joke the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th…... 101st, 102nd time around? Sometimes he’ll say, “Did you hear / see that? HA HA HA HA HA!”
“Yes, I heard it the first time, too.”
It’s hard to relax, really, and just enjoy the movie, knowing he’s going to be looking at me every five minutes to see if I “got it.”
Actually, I’ve taken to just freezing my face, and when he looks at me I just look back blankly. I expect it will confuse and annoy him enough that he’ll break that habit.

I’ve noticed his daughter does this, but in another way. She’ll say something she thinks is funny, then laughs really loud, then looks around the room to see if anyone else is laughing. If they are, she laughs even louder. If they aren’t, she’ll repeat it and laugh even louder.

@rojo LOL! I’m a leetle guilty of that too! It’s usually something that I feel is important that I’ve been working out in my head and something will just….come out. That’s when I find that whatever it is, he hadn’t given a second thought to, even though it was IMPORTANT!!

Two.
My wife is a wonderful cook, but leaves huge messes in the kitchen.

Also, my wife has never figured out how to close a zip lock bag.

Also: He asks a question. I give a thorough, complete answer.

He says, “You could have just said ‘no’. Why the dissertation? Why can’t you just give a simple answer? It wastes time”.

Your complaint about the length of my answer was longer than my original answer.

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

….

He’s nitpicky. Things have to be just so. This often results in him being left to do chores alone – if he doesn’t like the way I fold the laundry then he can do it himself just the way he likes it!

That’s pretty much the only thing, so I think he’s doing pretty well. :P

And that’s a perfect way of handling it, @Mariah. No need to get angry, no need to nag, simply “Do it yourself.”

When hubs cooks he’ll sometimes fill the dirty pan up with dish soap and water….and just let it sit. Sometimes on the stove, sometimes on the counter, sometimes in the sink. By the next morning it is so gross, especially if he cooked with grease. All greasy and slimy and cold. I can just see the little bacteria multiplying like crazy. I brought it up a couple of times, which just led to a fight, so I quit saying anything at all. And I just let it sit, too.
It’s really dumb because if he just leaves the dirty pan on the stove, as is, I’ll take care of it the next morning. But he still does it, and tries to tell me he’s “helping me” by letting it soak, although I’ve told me it isn’t helping not one little bit.
I’ve been timing it, though. The longest a pan sat was 3 weeks and 4 days.
But we haven’t argued about it in several years.
Did I mention he’s PA too?

@ibstubro Yep, the 3 favorite words of the passive aggressive, ” Maybe”, “Probably”, ” I don’t know.” haha All completely non-committal so you never know if something is really a yes or a no or a plan.

She’s messy.

It takes him a long time to make decisions. In contrast, I’m fairly impulsive. I do see that his caution is a good thing though. He slows things down on occasions, I speed them up on others. It works.

@Coloma And after you’ve been thorough it dozens of times, you finally decide to act as if it’s a no, rather than getting all ready to go, only to find out then that it’s a “no.” And sure as hell, he’ll start going, “What are you doing???? We were supposed to do XYZ today!”

It’s been years now, @Coloma, and, stupid me, I still expect an answer!

On a good day, I would say, “I’m wearing jeans to Tracy’s visitation tomorrow. How early should we go?” It’s just that I hate to be bossy.

I don’t know where the whole partner thing went wrong.

Being with someone else.

Oh! Can I have another one?

Traveling until it’s too late to enjoy the hotel at all. $100+ for a place to lay your head. Once in a while I’d like to stop, check in, have dinner someplace and have time to soak in the huge tub or visit the Jacuzzi for a relaxing soak. Plan something to watch on TV since there is none at home.

Nope. Check in after 8, run the remote all the way up, then all the way back down and go to sleep. Fun, fun.

When he tells me a story, he has to give me all the details. “So I said to him…. and then he said… and we were walking into the shop and then I said…”. When he gets to the end of this long story, I can summarise the whole conversation with “he wanted to buy a bag of nails, but they were out of stock at the hardware store”. This only really irritates me when I’m in the middle of doing something and he interrupts me to tell me this long-winded tale.

Yep, passive-aggressive here too. I swear his favourite phrase is ‘could do’. He says it all the time. Just say yes or no will you?

Also if he says something funny and I laugh then he says ‘what are you laughing at?’ WTF? However since I started saying ‘nothing’, he has mostly stopped that one.

The worst is when I have a story to tell and the first pause I take, an eye-glazing “Yeah, you remember her, she’s that woman that was in the checkout lane ahead of us – two over – when I bought mom’s flowers? In the red jacket? Her husband worked at the grocery that went out last year? In the meat department? She…” story ensues, @Earthbound_Misfit.
I particularly hate it in the car, too.
Literally 10, 15 minute monologues that have no point but a starting one.

JUST PICK ONE!, @Stinley.
I don’t eat meat, but I cook.
“Do you want pork or chicken for dinner?”
“Whatever you want to fix.”
“Nothing it is!” only causes a row.
I have yet to try opening the back door and throwing one or both into the yard…not that it hasn’t crossed my mind.

Really?
Is there something wrong with the bathroom sink?
I’m in the middle of fixing dinner and I have to stop so you can wash your hands in the kitchen sink?
Cabinets, fridge, stove, sink, pantry, dishwasher…the entire kitchen is about an 8’ x 8’ ‘L’ in an open floor plan.

I usually try to recall what a psychologist told my wife when we were having difficulties with our teenage son: “Pick your battles. Some things are not worth fighting about”.

By applying this to our relationship it helps keep the hard feelings to a minimum.

@Earthbound_Misfit Wow….my husband is the same way. He also mentions the names of the people in his drama only one time. From there he switches pronouns helter skelter. It’s like, “Mike, Fred and Ted went to a bar. So he tells him ‘don’t drink that!” And he’ll say, ‘why shouldn’t I drink that?’ And he’ll say, “Because he thinks it’s poison.’ Then he’ll say, ‘It IS poison!’ ”!

@rojo Yep. Not everything has to be an argument, even if you’re frustrated.

He quite often won’t stand up for what he believes in to avoid confrontation.

I wanted to say that in the main, my husband isn’t annoying at all. I’m much more annoying. I know I talk to him through walls. So he’s in the kitchen, I’m in the bedroom and I talk to him and expect him to hear. Since there are walls in the way and he has a hearing problem, I know this habit drives him nuts!

That she only exists in my imagination and refuses to manifest.

^^^ LOL

Narcissism.
I was in a faith-based thrift store today and the guy on the radio was talking about relationships and said that a narcissist can’t have a good relationship because they’re always thinking about themselves, and they always have to be right.
I thought, “Bingo! There’s my answer to the Fluther ‘annoying partner’ question.”

After 28 years with my husband I am so tired of him finding “something”
to gripe about with everything I do. To him there is a “certain way” to do
everything and it you do not do it that way…(his way) then you will hear
about it. “You cooked the ham too long” “You need to open the gate to
the inside” He makes me feel like I cannot do anything right. Since I
have hit menopause it has really bothered me lately…in the past I would
just listen and then go on with my business. I do not like confrontation
and so I usually don’t say anything back but lately I have been and he says
I have started “picking fights”. We love each other but many a girlfriend
told me there would be no way they could live with the way my husband is.
Why does he do this? Does he lack self confidence or what? Anyone else
married to a man like this?

So sorry you can’t blow it off like you used. He just trying to build up his own poor self esteem by trashing yours. I guess you need to decide if you really would be happier alone.

Anyone have a good “come back” I could say when it happens?
I don’t believe he even realizes he’s doing it and he doesn’t
do it out of spite. You can ask him about it and he doesn’t
remember being this way.

Sarcasm is just another free service I offer, but my response would be something like, “thanks, daddy, but I’m a big girl and can do it my own way” or “you’re more than welcome to cook dinner tomorrow night and show me how it’s done”.

“The show me how its done…..” I like that and it will work every time!
Thank you. If I have a come back maybe I won’t feel so picked on.

We have a farm and two sons but our sons refused to work on the
farm with him because “they could never do anything right.”
I hope he realized he ran his sons off himself and it hurts his
pride because neither son wants to farm with him.
His mother told me before I married him he was hard to
get along with….but did I listen? NOOOOO.
We still somehow love each other and the sex is still great!

@MooCows, I don’t know that sarcasm will bring about greater understanding of how his behaviour affects you and others. If he’s insecure, it might just make things much worse. Have you thought about simply telling him how it makes you feel and asking him to go and see a counsellor with you? Not because your relationship is on the rocks, although it sounds as if it will be unless something changes, but because sometimes you need an external voice to help people to understand that their behaviour/words are negative and to help them find different ways to communicate.

I’d get some outside help.

If my husband were doing that, I’d make it very inconvenient for him. You can’t open the gate the right way? Holler for him to come open the gate because you don’t know how to do it.
Didn’t cook the ham right? Tell him he can cook the ham next time…and mean it.
But…it’s been this way for so long, and you’ve just accepted it for so long….

My SO has food issues. I actually quit eating what he cooked several years ago because he gets like a Nagging Nancy, obsessing over it. Like, last night he made fried chicken and mashed potatoes and gravy. Of course, he made them late. They weren’t ready to eat until after 9 p.m. I go to bed at 9:30 or so.
I decided to get a small plate of potatoes and gravy before I went to bed. I sit down on the couch to eat and it’s like, “There’s chicken in the oven! You want some chicken?”
“No, thanks. This is all I want.”
“The chicken is good! You want me to get you some?”
“No, thanks.”
“You sure? It’s good!”
“I’m sure.”
[exasperated sigh on his part.]
“How is the gravy?”
“It’s good.”
“You sure you’re not just saying that because you’re hungry? See, I kinda messed up on it… [launches into detail about how he messed up….] Also, I put too much milk in the potatoes. Can you tell?”
“No, they seem perfectly fine to me. It’s good.”
“You sure you’re not just saying that?”...
Of course, if I don’t like something he pouts.

Where the fuck does this come from??? I mean, I just want to EAT, not have a 30 minute discussion about it!
Once, several years ago, he went so far as to tell me how to dish the food up on my plate, specifically how to put the gravy on my potatoes. At that point I slammed my plate down, and left my dinner on the counter and never really ate what he cooked again….unless I was in the mood to field 20 questions, like last night. I’ll eat it the next day for lunch.

Me, when I say “Foods ready,” it’s ready. Eat or don’t eat, I don’t care.

Walking out after 37 years without talking it over. But it’s all right now.