Why Husband's are Annoying (and What You Can Do About It) - Part 1.

Yes, it’s true. Husbands are annoying and if you don’t agree with me or are a bit confused re the subject matter you are either:

Not Married
A tad annoying yourself no doubt.

This was intended to be a blog post in its entirety – a simple list of the myriad of annoying things husbands do with some practical take-home suggestions. However, I slightly underestimated the sheer volume of the subject matter. To paraphrase Sonnet 43, ‘How doth you annoy me so? Let me count the ways….’ hence I decided this will be the first in an ongoing series. So, if you are keen to maintain the sanctity of your marriage without slowly losing your mind over the often trivial, but nonetheless deeply irritating things your husband does then read on patient wives (and husbands), read on.

Annoying Habit No 1.

‘He Doesn’t Listen to Me.’

There are a few reasons he might not be listening and they vary from the fairly trivial to the properly worrying. If he isn’t listening to you it might just be because you talk a lot and he is not that interested in what you are saying. Actually. Verbally our language styles are pretty different; men speak in bullet points whilst women tend to speak in whole paragraphs. Men like to get-to-the-point, so tend to tune out when we are deep in an extended response.

If our chat is revolved around a series of whinges (‘I have spent the whole day cleaning up and I ask you to do one thing…and then what do you do? You just sit on the sofa watching sport obviously quite happy for me to do everything…Richard? Richard – are you even listening to a word I am saying to you?’) or something similar he has no interest in, (‘well, then Sally said that she thought maybe little Charlie was teething, so I told him about the time our Jimmy had reflex…. Richard?…) then you may as well give up completely.

This is what is aptly known as Selective Listening and it is why he can’t hear you when you ask if he will get the baby at 3am but has no problem hearing a whispered offer of fellatio. Selective Listening is normal behaviour but still annoying, so try and explain how it makes you feel without criticising him directly (less satisfying but more effective). He will likely pretend to understand and then just get better at pretending to listen.

If the not-listening is more than just standard procedure, then it could be an indication of a deeper problem. Whilst women tend to externalise and talk stuff out, men tend to internalise and deal with stress by withdrawing. John Gottman, the Psychotherapist renowned for his work on marital status and divorce prediction, describes the act of Stonewalling as the last of what he calls The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (a metaphor based on the end of times in the New Testament and the strongest indicators of impending divorce). The three proceeding horsemen are Criticism, Contempt, and Defensiveness with the fourth, Stonewalling or shutting the other out, often coming as a result of the first three. Gottman says this occurs ‘when the listener withdraws from the interaction…. rather than confronting the issues (which tend to accumulate!) with our partner, we make evasive manoeuvres such as tuning out.’

Nothing can be more maddening for a woman, programmed to talk things out, than a man who says nothing at all.

Best Practice: Choose your conversational battles wisely. Find a better suited audience for the stuff that doesn’t interest him and learn the smarter way to get him to do stuff without having to nag (more on this in ‘Why he does f**k all around the House’ later in the series). If the issue is deeper-rooted then it may be time to seek professional help. Many guys detest the idea of seeing a ‘professional’ but ironically talking to a stranger can often be just the thing to get them to open up. If you decide to go along for support just don’t forget to let the poor chap get a word in edgeways.

This Get Happier Post is brought to you by someone who feels blessed to air her dirty laundry in public.