Why Husbands Are Annoying (& What You Can Do About It) – Part 2

Firstly, I must congratulate husbands everywhere for creating the sheer volume of subject matter that is justifying a Part. 2 post. A sequel no less, in honour of the things (mostly unknowingly), that these fine men in our lives do that drives us nearly out of our mind with annoyance. In the interest of not dragging this series on ad infinutum I will do my best to keep the remainder of them brief. If you missed Part 1 that discussed that favorite pet peeve of ours – ‘Why he never listens to me’ – you can click here for the answer.

In no particular order the remaining annoyances (and some suggested solutions) are:

• ‘He does f*ck all around the house’ – In a study of more than 3,000 people by health campaign group Everyman, the No.1 complaint from the wives was was how little help they got around the house. It is one of those topics where our husbands seem to suffer from some next-level blindness or complete disconnect. Post shower, they casually toss their wet towel on the bed (and leave it there) or of an evening remove their trousers and socks (and then leave them there, on the floor, when the laundry basket is no more than three-feet-away from where they dis-robed). They make toast spread with butter and eat it watching TV (leaving the butter on the counter, with the lid still off before trailing an irritating amount of crumbs behind them). You look at the towel, the socks, the butter, the crumbs and then at him. And he just looks confused – like, seriously dude, can you not see the total trail of destruction you leave in your wake? Or maybe that’s just me. For others it’s having to continually ask again, and again, and (for the love of God) not again for something simple, like taking out the rubbish or emptying the dishwasher. We are not asking for something difficult – like for them to fix the refrigerator or write us a love song. It’s just a domestic chore (or 3) – how flipping hard can it be?

What can you do about it?

Well, firstly lets look at what is not working. Nagging. Which is a shame, because we are so damn good at it. In fact, the Everyman study found that wives spend on average 7,920 minutes a year nagging their husbands – that is two and a half hours per week. 50% of the husband respondents did say they ‘gave in’ after an hour if their partner carried on with the topic – by which time the wife is fed up and the husband feels hard done by. Poor Darling. The experts advise that best results are yielded by ‘presenting your requests in a positive way’ and to ‘use physical touch to help communicate your wants’ – so, in the intrests of hygeine, put your hand on his arse and tell him how happy it would make you, if he would be so kind as to clean out the cat litter. Better still refer him to the findings of a very real study published in the Journal of Family Psychology that showed that men who make a ‘fair contribution to housework have more and better sex with their partners.’ Or just make one up and say they discovered ‘that men who do little to no household chores, run the significantly higher risk of penis shrinkage.’ That should do it.

• ‘He never goes to the Doctor’ – This one is annoying because we actually care about you not dying – well not at least until you have helped us raise our children – we don’t deserve to do that all that crap on our own. The thing women- who do want to stay alive- don’t understand is why the men surveyed on this topic believe that going to the doctor, or having some kind of health problem, threatens their masculinity. “They’ll ignore blood in their urine and watch testicular tumors grow to the size of grapefruits because they’re afraid to come in,” says urologist Sheldon Marks, M.D., author of Prostate and Cancer: A Family Guide to Diagnosis, Treatment, and Survival.  Even if you feel completely healthy (with nothing remotely grapefruit sized) you still need to see a doctor occasionally – most people with high blood pressure or high blood sugar or high cholestrol don’t even know it and one-third of all heart-attack victims never have any warning at all.

What can you do about it?

Maybe pander to his masculinity a bit – its not really his fault and is likely a DNA strand leftover from caveman times when he needed to rely on being physically stronger to ensure his hunting game stayed strong. You can also play the subtle guilt game – remind him he is not just staying healthy for himself, but to ensure he spends time with his family and loved ones for as long as possible. If he is just logistically challenged and needs to be led, like a small child, then maybe go ahead and make the appointments for him. However, you need to distinguish between being a helpful PA type facilitator here and acting like his mother. You start acting like his mother and you may as well say sayonara to your sex life. People by nature are more inclined to do something with a partner so maybe book yourself (and the family) in at the same time and then its less about ‘them’ and more about ‘us’. Taking the time to find a good doctor you like and trust makes a big difference – I like the advice I once read about finding a doctor around the same age so you get to grow old together. Or you could just make something up, like – ‘men who visit the doctor on a regular basis have been statistically proven to be more attractive to the opposite sex.’

• ‘Not being able to Mind Read’ – I appreciate this one can seem a little unfair, but truth is a lot of the time we just want you to know intuitively, as if by voodoo magic, exactly what we are thinking or what you are not doing right or why we are mad at you. It is in part our romantic notion that, if you truly love us, you should automatically ‘get us’ and in part because we are fairly good at the intuitive stuff so it seems pretty weird to us that you are a bit rubbish at it.

What can you do about it?

If he asks you ‘What’s wrong?’ instead of saying ‘Nothing’ and thinking ‘You total loser, can’t you see I am obviously devastated that you are not listening/kept looking at that girl’s tits/worried about my Mum’s diagnosis’, maybe tell him. Annoying as it is, you kinda have to spell-it-out. If you just need them to listen and not have them jump in with manly solutions to save the day, then tell them – kindly. Hell may hath no fury like a woman scorned, but nothing gets a man to snap shut faster than a venus fly trap than some straight out critisism. Most of the time he is probably trying and the whole Men are from Venus, Women are from Mars stuff is kinda true. Psychologists on the whole agree that women, for the most part, tend to empathise whilst men tend to systematize. They want to get up, go to work and make it through their day with the minimum of emotional fuss. It’s not that they don’t care – it’s just they are not programmed to care quite as much. There was an excellent example that did the rounds a few years ago – the female perspective of her day was 3 pages of concerns (is he annoyed with me?’), feelings (‘I am upset that he didn’t call me’) and a dizzying range of emotions that culminated in her happiness they had ended the day making love. The boy’s same day in terms of emotions was conveyed in 2 sentences ‘Shit day at work. Got Laid Though’.

Or you can just make something up like……

Who am I kidding? – there is no way I can just wrap up this whole ‘Why Husband’s are Annoying’ thing neatly in a one-sitting sized blog post. We are only 3 down and I still have content for days. I also have a husband who is likely – as I write this – compiling a list of his own. Because the sad fact is that none of us are perfect and like the fridge magnet says, most us us are ‘entirely made up of flaws stitched together with good intentions’.

This Get Happier Post is brought to you by someone whose intentions are good but whose fuse can be short.