WIFE SPEAK: Don't worry about pet peeves, you'll get over them

His pulling the blanket would wake me and his snoring keep me up al night. But not any more. PHOTO | FILE

What you need to know:

  • We have pet peeves that to date test each other’s patience.
  • I think better and find order in my disorganised shelves. And I completely hit the roof when hubby or anyone else organises my stuff.
  • Hubby is annoyingly orderly. He keeps everything filed and appropriately marked. And his closet is well-arranged.
  • Do you have feedback on this story? E-mail: [email protected]

I have a terrible reaction to mutton. If the swelling and itching of the skin is not bad enough, the overall feeling of being unwell is such a dumper. More so, if I am at a party and just when things are getting merrier, I have to leave.

There was this girl, back in primary school, who would get such a weird reaction at the sight of ants. Her body would develop goose bumps, and then she would have shortness of breath.

We were mean to her, as children can be, and would go out of our way to find ants, then drag her and trick her into looking at them. We would then sit back and watch, amused at her reaction and suffering.

This incident came to mind the other day as I read an account by a marriage counsellor about pet peeves in relationships that are like allergies. Those really annoying little habits that our spouses have that get under our skins can cause endless conflict and result in the breakdown of the relationship.

I used to think snoring would make me pack up and leave. What a shocker it was those first months of marriage when we would fight in the middle of the night because he snored and kept me awake. And I would have dark circles around my eyes the following day and start dozing in the middle of the day.

Colleagues would joke that my honeymoon was getting the better of me. If only they knew!

But since the day the babies landed, no amount of snoring disrupts my sleep any more. I am just grateful to have three hours of uninterrupted sleep. My head hits the pillow and I black out. Only a child’s cry gets me off slumberland. I am not even upset when hubby says that I took over from him and that I now snore...

We have pet peeves that to date test each other’s patience. I can be scatterbrained. Okay, I am completely scatterbrained. I think better and find order in my disorganised shelves. And I completely hit the roof when he or anyone else organises my stuff. Thank you very much, but I know in which pile my birth certificate is stuffed.

He panics if we are filling in an important or urgent application that requires documents that we rarely use, like high school leaving certificates, because he is suspects that I could have disposed of it with some piles of paper.

You see, he is annoyingly orderly. He keeps everything filed and appropriately marked. Shirts in his closet are arranged in order of the frequency he puts them on – from the most worn to the least, or something like that.

I stopped managing his side of the closet because I would get upset about reminders like: “The T-shirts should be there and the formal shirts should face that way.”

I tell him the reason that I am not that orderly is because I notice dust every five minutes. It is in every corner and crook that has not been touched in days. He does not notice the dust.

I'M NOT ALONE

One of my friends, who has only sons, says that she has pasted reminders in every bathroom in the house. ‘Please aim in the bowl, wipe the toilet, and flush after peeing’.

“No one even reads the notices. They picked the habit from the dad. I pity their wives,” she says. I laugh.

“I am tired of screaming; ‘flush works for pee too!’”

I feel every bit of her frustration.

If I survived the facial hairs all over the sink every few days after shaving, then I will survive much worse. Those facial hairs are like my friends now. We chat about life as I scrub the sink and drain them down the bathroom sink.

There is loads of learning involved when dealing with pet peeves. For example, I am pretty good at beddings combat now. He turns over with the beddings, the blast of cold weather rudely awakens me, I automatically grab corners of the beddings and hurl them to my side, all without losing a wink of sleep. We do this about five times in the night and voila, morning comes.

If he has survived my African timing and unbelievable calmness about it, then he will survive much worse in this marriage. It has hopefully taught him the art of apologising for lateness.

“I am so sorry, we got held up…” he says when we arrive at an event 30 minutes late. Most times, half the people have not arrived and usually we are not talking because he rushed me and lectured me the entire time about timekeeping.

“Chill out man, we are only a few minutes late. We are on time, maybe not in time.”

“It’s just a bad habit not to keep time,” he usually retorts.

“Life is not that serious. Better late than never,” I say, which completely gets his goat.

Pet peeves are the unavoidable side effects of every relationship, what’s yours?

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