How I drive my DH nuts (and other stories)

[Slartibartfast]

DH was driving me absolutely bonkers yesterday, to the point I was trying to come up with a vague reason I could post about it on eHell and not have it be a rant    It got me thinking about the other way around, though - what do YOU do that drives your partner crazy?

I will fully admit to one particular quirk - DH's pillow is an old feather relic, maybe half an inch of poof left in it.  He doesn't even notice when it's not on the bed.  My pillow, on the other hand, is a big slab of foam about two inches thick.  Sometimes I like to lie in bed and read - and I usually fold DH's pillow into quarters and use that instead.  (I'm blind as a bat without my glasses, so when I read a paperback it's about an inch from my nose.  My pillow gets in the way.)

DH finally admitted it drives him nuts when I fold his pillow.  I have no idea how he can tell whether it's been folded or not, because it can't get any flatter than it already is, but apparently he can.  I'm going to have to come up with an alternative for reading now

So in the interest of amusing everyone instead of ranting: what do you do that drives your significant other crazy?

[cicero]

me? drive someone crazy? no way. i'm perfect.

 

i'm no longer married, but i know it used to drive my now ex husband crazy when i would have the radio on in the kitchen (while i was working to clean up *his* house and cook *his* meals, mind you). He would often walk stride stomp into the kitchen and turn it off (but because he is such a doofus, he didn't turn it *off*, which was the middle setting, he would turn to *tape recorder* which is the far left setting and then it would make this annoying noise...).

and, it also annoyed him when i would use my credit card a few times in one day because then *he* had to enter the transactions into his stupid spread sheet and it was too much work for him to do. and no, i couldn't let him do all the shopping because then all we would eat would be diet coke, pickles and pastrami. and potato chips. and no he couldn't let me enter the transactions because (a) i would do it wrong and (b) then i might actually see how much money we actualy had and how much money he was actually spending on himself.

[mechtilde]

I had no idea we were married!

Seriously- my DH folds and scrunches up our pillowsa and it drives me nuts! It's even worse when he scrunches the pillows into the pillowcases 

[JennJenn68]

What do I do to drive my husband crazy?  Wait, you mean his insanity is all my fault?  Oh, well, that explains everything, then...

There are certain chick flicks I insist on watching periodically which cause him to flee the room in terror.  ("Sleepless in Seattle" and "Steel Magnolias" in particular come to mind.)  Or the fact that I'm addicted to popcorn and am always eating the stuff... and I'm not always as careful as I should be about the debris.  (Okay, I really shouldn't eat it in bed.  I'm obnoxious.)  Add in the fact that I'm a habitual singer/hummer/talker to myself, and I think that sometimes I must drive him up the bleeding wall!  That being said, the man has the patience of a saint--he never calls me on any of these things (or anything else, for that matter!) so I had to think hard to come up with these.    And because of his forbearance, I have developed the tendency to let his annoying habits pass (mostly) without comment...

(Except for the socks on the floor of the TV room!  Now that he's got our son doing it, I just might have to combust spontaneously--but quietly, so as to be eHell-approved!)

[Teenyweeny]

My wife hangs the laundry (and damp towels) out 'wrong'. Seriously, she festoons them all over the place, until the house looks like Mrs Tiggywinkle's! It's definitely a 'her family' way of doing things, I've noticed it when I've been to stay with them.

Wet clothes go on the radiators *neatly*, not scrunched up. If there are too many, then for the love of God use the clothes horse! Damp (used) towels go on the towel rail, not anywhere else, because if you put them somewhere else I can't tell damp-from-the-washing-machine towels from *used* towels. And if there is a towel on the towel rail, use that one! If you want to get a clean one, then do, but then logically the one on the towel rail is dirty and needs to go in the laundry basket.

And that is the story of why I do all the laundry. 

[lady_disdain]

My wife hangs the laundry (and damp towels) out 'wrong'. Seriously, she festoons them all over the place, until the house looks like Mrs Tiggywinkle's! It's definitely a 'her family' way of doing things, I've noticed it when I've been to stay with them.

Wet clothes go on the radiators *neatly*, not scrunched up. If there are too many, then for the love of God use the clothes horse! Damp (used) towels go on the towel rail, not anywhere else, because if you put them somewhere else I can't tell damp-from-the-washing-machine towels from *used* towels. And if there is a towel on the towel rail, use that one! If you want to get a clean one, then do, but then logically the one on the towel rail is dirty and needs to go in the laundry basket.

And that is the story of why I do all the laundry. 

Thank you for your story. Now I know exactly what I have to do

[alkira6]

Money management.  I have always been very, how can I put this? hmmm, anal about money.  So much so that my DH had a "come to Jesus" meeting with me about it about 5 years ago when he bought Taco Bell with the debit card and CRUD MONKEYS! *headsploidy* he didn't record it in the spreadsheet for our expendatures.  Yeah - really, really anal about money.

Another thing - I put dishes under the sofa.  I will eat on the sofa, put the dish on the floor and then nudge it under the edge of the sofa so that I don't hit it with my foot or the dog take it and hide it.  What happens is either A. we find an insane amount of dishes under the sofa when we do the weekly clean or B. we randonly find dishes everywhere because the dog pulled them from under the sofa and "hid" them after licking them clean.  Notice that there is no C. I remember to pick up my dishes and put them in the dishwasher when I get up.

And, yes, I know that this is phenominally lazy. 

[Slartibartfast]

(Except for the socks on the floor of the TV room!  Now that he's got our son doing it, I just might have to combust spontaneously--but quietly, so as to be eHell-approved!)

Ooh, our second dog helped break my husband of this one   I had given up and resigned myself to shoes and socks all over the living room and the study, but when we got Kiki she developed a habit of stealing his socks and "hiding" them in the backyard.  (By "hiding," I mean she'd dig a hole about an inch deep, stuff a little corner of the stock in it, and push about a teaspoonful of dirt on top.)  The socks were perfectly fine, but dirty and covered in dog slobber.  DH still forgets, and Kiki still steals his socks (she's stopped with the digging holes, thank goodness!), but at least I don't have to see socks all over the floor anymore

[JennJenn68]

Okay, you have just come up with the only valid argument that I have ever heard for acquiring a dog... 

(N.B.  I love dogs--OTHER people's dogs.  I just don't have the temperament to have one or the time and energy it would take to care for one properly!)

D'you think I could manage to train my cats to do something similar?

[SiotehCat]

- I don't drink the entire contents of a soda can before I am done with it.

- I leave my cell phone in the car or I have the ringer off, which makes trying to reach me kind of difficult.

- I let the dog sleep in the bed and sometimes I let him use DH's blanket.

- I believe in ghosts, spirits, karma, luck,etc...Dh thinks its ridiculous, but it really drives him nuts when I encourage DS to believe it too.

[Clair Seulement]

What a fun thread!

I don't plan, and neither does my family. We'll say "let's get together Saturday" and figure out the time the night before or that morning. This drives my husband nuts. Also, I will do things spur of the moment whereas he won't--I'll agree to drinks after work the day of, if someone asks me. For some reason, my husband will never say yes to plans that he hasn't known about at least 24 hours in advance, even if he is doing *nothing* that night anyway (I used to tease him for this when we were first dating, now I'm just used to it).

His planning drives *me* nuts in that that's all he does. The other day at work, he g-chatted me that *he had to clean his laptop screen* at some point. The kinds of things that people just either do or not do in a moment, he talks about hours and days in advance.

[Bijou]

My husband has a wonderful gift.  He listens to radio stations that have terrible reception and can he actually filter out the dialog from the screeching and scrapping and aural 'snow' and all that excess noise doesn't even get on his nerves.  I, on the other hand have to leave the room, if not the house to escape it. 
   

[magicdomino]

Okay, you have just come up with the only valid argument that I have ever heard for acquiring a dog... 

(N.B.  I love dogs--OTHER people's dogs.  I just don't have the temperament to have one or the time and energy it would take to care for one properly!)

D'you think I could manage to train my cats to do something similar?

Does one of your cats have "issues"?  Domino pees on any fabric that is left on the floor, like  socks and towels.   

[Dindrane]

Well, I have a "thing" about the sheets on the bed.  I am not a neat person, not by a long shot, but I have a hard time sleeping if my sheets aren't tucked in neatly and everything on the bed is not just so.  I am the official maker of beds in this marriage because frankly, DH doesn't do it right.

In fact, that's what drives DH crazy about me -- I am picky almost to the point of obsession about certain things (like the bed), but I'd be totally cool leaving soda cans all over the house and dishes all over the kitchen if it didn't bug him.  He doesn't understand how I can be so messy and so particular at the same time (to the point where I am sometimes messy because I am particular -- doing a chore the way I think it needs to be done takes too much effort, so I just don't do it at all).

I pretty much always wake up earlier than DH does.  Most mornings, I wake him up when I start the process of putting on makeup and getting dressed.  Every morning, I find him burritoed in the sheets, which tugs them every which way, and sleeping diagonally across the bed on my pillow.  I wouldn't mind him sleeping on my pillow so much, but he has a tendency to drool.

I have gotten him to start straightening out the sheets when he gets up in the morning, though.  I wish he did a better job, but he's doing it entirely because I want him to, so I'll take it.

[Shopaholic]

I unplug the charger to his phone.
Electricity bills are insanely high, and the bill we pay (just us two) is equal to that of my ILs, that have a kid and an apartment twice the size of ours. So I unplug the charger when it's not in use.
It drives him nuts. Especially the fact that he has asked me repeatedly not to do it.

He has no problem ignoring my repeated requests - like put the can of shaving cream back in its place (it leaves rust rings on the sink), put his socks in the laundry basket (I don't see any added value to having them in the closed balcony), or rinse out his cup of Turkish coffee.
The dog also recently chewed his best pair of shoes. And yet, he still leaves his shoes under the coffee table. For weeks on end...