Help! My partner’s really annoying!
by Mira and Charles on April 6th, 2009I’ve seen couples survive betrayal, abuse, tragedy, incompatibility, insanity, termites, alien abductions, you name it. But nothing puts a marriage in more jeopardy than when the one person finds the other really annoying. Let me put it this way. Bill Gates is one of the richest men in the world. But even if he were also the handsomest, sweetest, sexiest guy in the world, if you were in a relationship with him and you found him annoying, you’d still end up feeling “let me out of here!” even if you’d signed an iron-clad pre-nup that gave you nothing if you left.
So what can you do if you’re in a relationship with someone you find annoying?
You might think you can suck it up, but you can’t. Being with an annoying partner is like living downwind from a pig farm. There’s no way you can get used to it.
Here’s how Ann, 36, described it. “Brad is a really good guy. A sweet guy, really. That’s what makes this so hard. He’s also the most annoying man in the world. He’s still young, but when he sits down he groans, and when he gets up he grunts. Groaning down, grunting up. Like a grandpa. I find myself saying to him, ‘Are you going to be getting up and down?’ Because I know there’s going to be the grunting and the groaning.
“But that’s nothing. He’s got the worst timing in the world. When does Brad want to make love, you might be wondering. When I’m exhausted, is the answer. God forbid he should want us to have sex when I’m, like, awake. And he’s always late for everything. He forgets everything. He hums the same stupid tunes over and over. When he eats, oh God, he scrapes the fork on his front teeth when he’s pulling it out of his mouth. He puts his finger in his ear and then looks at his finger. He wears his pants too high. He’s even a pretty good little lover, except that when he reaches orgasm he always says, “Oh, mama!” … I could go on and on.”
Our partner’s annoying traits might seem like little things, but they’re big time love killers. So we’ve got to deal with them before it’s too late.
What are some ways to handle this that work? Let me know. I want to know if any of you have ever done anything that’s actually WORKED to get your partner to cut it out some annoying behavior. We all need your suggestions desperately. Let me tell you what I’ve learned about how to deal with annoying people.
Here’s what NOT to do. Don’t nag. Your partner will just tune you out.
And don’t fall into this pattern: you keep putting up with it past the point of endurance, then you blow up. This just makes you seem like the bad guy because you’ve “overreacted.” And then the focus is on you the over-reactor, not on Mr. Annoying over there.
But here’s what DOES work. (At least this is the best I’ve found so far, short of radical brain surgery.)
Pick one trait you find most annoying. The next time you have some time together after you’ve gotten relaxed with each other, reach over, take your partner’s hand, and say something like, “Sweetie, I really need your help. There’s this thing you do that’s a real problem for us.”
Then without making a big, angry, humiliating deal of it, tell your partner very simply the thing you find annoying. Ask him if he’s aware of what he’s doing. If not, ask him if it’s OK if you point it out to him when it happens.
Then say calmly, “It’s so annoying that it makes me mad at you and I don’t feel like spending time with you, and I really hate feeling that way because I really like it when we’re close.” That way he knows the cost of his annoying behavior.
Then say, “I need you to agree that you’ll work on this with me. Here’s how I’d like us to work on it. You’ll try and stop. Every time I notice you’re doing it, I’ll gently point it out. If you’d rather work on it some other way, let me know. Will you agree to work on it, because I know it will then be so much better for our relationship?” It’s your getting your partner’s agreement that gives you your best chance of success.
It might take you a little while to work out an agreement. Your partner might say that it’s too hard to change or that it’s not such a big deal. Just hang in there patiently until you get an agreement. Emphasize two things. How easy it will be for this annoying habit to change if the two of you work on it. How much better things will be for your partner if it changes.
I know: using a cattle prod sounds a lot easier. But this has worked really well for a lot of people. Get an agreement. Make a plan. Be patient. Be persistent.
For more help on how to deal with those really annoying problems in a relationship, click here for the best how-to-make-things-better-in-your-relationship book there is: Our Love Is Too Good to Feel So Bad: The 10 Prescriptions to Heal Your Relationship.
If you’re in a place where you seriously wonder if you should be in this relationship at all, stop being stuck. Relationship ambivalence is dangerous: it cause you to stop putting energy into your relationship, and then it can actually become too bad to stay in. To find out for sure if you should hang in there or bail out, click here for the classic book on this subject: Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay: A Step-by-step Guide to Help You Decide Whether to Stay IN or Get Out of Your Relationship.
Let us know how it turns out for you and, please, let me know if you’ve found something that also works. Also, let us know about some really annoying traits in your partner that you’d like to change. Let’s see what we can do about it.
Love,
Mira
