Today we are going to hear from Vanessa. She writes to me about her husband who she says is sadly annoying and nearly impossible to live with.
Do you know the type?
I am sure some of you out there may have occasion to wonder why your husband annoys you so much. You might be thinking right now about some of those annoying husband habits that he just can’t seem to shake.
You may even have convinced yourself that your husband annoys you on purpose. Does your guy have a devious streak in him? Let’s hope not.
Indeed, it may have reached the point where you find it nearly impossible to be around him.
What should you do if the fabric of your marriage is being torn by annoyances that seem to mount day by day?
Let’s let Vanessa weight in on this topic.
Vanessa wrote to tell me, “Chris, my husband is obnoxious and manipulative. I am convinced he is a control freak and I get easily annoyed by him all of the time. He knows how to push all the wrong buttons. He doesn’t even try to change. I have given up on how to get my husband to be less annoying and overbearing. I have come to accept that is the way he will always be. Married and stuck with a lousy husband.”
The Irritating Husband Syndrome
It can be tough when your husband’s manner causes you to want to lie in bed all day long. Some days, Vanessa could hardly bring herself to face her situation.
Now Vanessa did tell me she has some of her own fussy little habits that seem to unnerve her husband as well. Frankly, when she offered up some examples, I really didn’t understand why her husband would get bent out of shape over such things like double checking if the doors were locked or often sanitizing the kitchen counters.
I told her I thought her husband was just picking at her.
But we are not here today to talk about annoying wife habits.
I am sure I could write quite a lengthy article on how to deal with a difficult wife. Women are certainly not immune to this problem of creating a little chaos.
For the guys reading this post, just know your turn will come and in the future I will be weighing in on some of the problems you may be having with your wife.
But today, I have chosen to focus in part on Vanessa’s problem and how I helped her deal with her husband’s idiosyncracies.
I guess we could call it the Irritating Husband Syndrome.
Are you plagued by a husband who can’t seem to stop doing those little things that is aggravating or is unnerving?
Has your husband’s personality become annoying and irritating lately?
Or has your spouse always been this way such in Vanessa’s case, “My husband always irritated me and I can’t get him to stop. I think he does it on purpose.”
If we were to make a list of the most annoying spouse habits, how many of them would you be able to check off. Well, you are going to find out because that is what we are going to do in a minute.
As I alluded to earlier, when your husband is doing things that get on your nerves and drives you a little bonkers, it can challenge you in all sorts of ways.
You may find yourself asking why you ever married this man in the first place. You might think to yourself that you are going to scream or go berserk if he doesn’t stop whatever he is doing.
Truth be told, no women ever sets out to marry a guy who is difficult to live with. Your heart was probably in the right place, but choosing a partner for life based on what your heart may have told you long ago can be a slippery slope.
This was Vanessa’s situation.
She had married young, rushing into a committment that she now regrets. Vanessa’s husband was very religious and old-fashioned, so they had not really lived together prior to get hitched.
There were a lot of things they did know about each other. She explained that it was awkward in the beginning as they fumbled through some of the basics. Sex was very clumsy. He was inexperienced. While Vanessa was younger, she had two other sexual partners. He fumbled a lot and got very tense and uptight when she would suggest things.
Later, probably out of resentment, he would make little cutting remarks directed at her. It could be over anything. At first, his behavior unnerved her. She didn’t appreciate his snide comments. But over time, the annoyance factor changed to resentment as his antics grew to be old.
So her husband’s biting remarks were not the only things that bothered her.
Her husband also insisted they prey often during the day. She knew he was head strong and passionate about his religious views. At least that is how she perceived him in the beginning of the relationship. Later she came to believe that he was just overbearing and intolerant of her own views.
Her husband’s personal habits also eked at her.
You know the sound when someone screeches chalk on a chalkboard, right? That is sorta how she described it. Her husband had an annoying habit of striking a really high-pitched voice when he was angry.
Not only was the sound of his voice annoying, but it so irked her she would often leave the room when it happened which in turn would cause him to get more upset and raise his voice to still a higher pitch.
She would try to explain to her husband that she didn’t like getting yelled at. The volume and high pitch of her husband’s voice not only hurt her ears, but it made her feel unsafe.
But her protestations were usually infective.
The Beginning of the End of the Relationship
To avoid this kind of thing from happening a lot, she found herself just becoming agreeable and avoiding conflict.
She knows she was blowing fairy dust at him, but to turn the page to another day, she felt she had little recourse.
It was as if the relationship was coming apart at the seams in slow motion.
The end of the marriage clock was ticking and every time her husband would created yet another drama, it would tick by faster.
Worse, she felt helpless. At least for a while.
When she tried to stand up for herself, he would start lecturing her and give her old outdated ultimatums, insisting that god placed the husband in charge of the marriage.
This was not the only problem Vanessa reported. Her husband also had an annoying habit of insisting that she write down her daily chores and check off each task as it was completed.
It was something he did as well for his own work activities. He insisted with persistence that people are inherently inefficient and lazy and that the only way to avoid becoming sinful was to track one’s daily activities.
Given that she was more laid back when growing up, this kind of structured living did not sit well with her. She went along with it in the beginning, but after the first few weeks of marriage, she grew tired of such a regimented life style and wanted more freedom to pursue things without fear that she would be criticized or made to feel guilty.
All of these things began to take a toll on her and his constant little criticisms not only annoyed her, but caused her to become disillusioned. She found herself wondering if other marriages operated this way.
I know some of this sounds pretty weird, but Vanessa had little experience with the workings of a marriage. She grew up in a single mother household. So there wasn’t a lot for her to use as a comparison except what she picked up from friends.
Brainwashing is a strong word for what she was enduring.
But it appeared that her husband was going out of his way to make her conform with his views and expectations for the marriage. He had told her numerous times that marriages all over failed because of lack of commitment to duty and upholding the sacred vows.
Early on, Vanessa bought into that view and tried to go along with his puritanical views of how a marriage should operate. Vanessa’s husband insisted that the husband was always the head of the household and if she didn’t see the world in his way, then she was violating her vows and god’s plan.
Unfortunately for her husband, we do not live in the 18 century and Vanessa soon began rebelling along a lot of fronts. She was so turned off by his regimented ways of controlling so many aspects of the marriage and her personal time, she fought back in small ways in the beginning.
She quite doing his “stupid daily scrolls” as she called them.
She started to withhold sex from him with the thought in mind that he would leave her and find some other woman who would follow his marching orders.
One particularly eventful day, when her husband screech at her in his loud tone and demanded that she obey him, she screwed up all her courage, then cursed him and left the house.
To say the least he was shocked.
She told me that while her husband was a very annoying man to live with, what made it unbearable was her sense that she was being held prisoner. Not literally, but emotionally. She explained that she became overwhelmed with the constant desire to escape and regain her independence.
The balance of personal power had swung far out of whack in her marriage.
That is when she knew things would never work out.
Not only was her husband driving her loopy by what she now recognized as a somewhat bizarre preoccupation with operating their marriage in accordance with his religious teachings, but she found the tone of his utterances personally unattractive.
While his mannerisms and habits were not revolting per se, the annoyances and odd preoccupation with religious rituals and had caused her to feel uncomfortable and controlled.
So what finally happened?
Did Vanessa and her husband arrive at a new understanding?
Did she confront her husband with an ultimatum only to be met with fire and brimstone?
Well, before I tell you how her saga ended, let’s take a moment to explore the top 10 annoying things your husband might be doing to drive you mad!
The Top Ten Annoying Things Your Husband Does That Drives You Crazy
- Your husband smacks his food so loudly and in such a unattractive way, you almost have to jump out of your skin to keep your sanity.
- The man you married seems more attached to his phone. It is bad enough that he frequently ignores you as he seems to always want to check his messages, but he insists on giving you a running dialogue about all things pertaining to him.
- Your man is a flirt. Every chance he gets he tries to catch the eye of other women. Whether he does it in your presence or not, it doesn’t matter to him. It is as if he has a unconscious desire to be noticed by the opposite sex and this behavior drives you nuts.
- Your husband is a compulsive liar. He is a kind of guy who is always bending the truth. Even his petty lies are more than just a little annoying. His insistence to deceive seems to know no end. You are not sure if you should be irritated, frustrated, or just downright mad.
- Your husband is a slob. He can’t seem to get it though his head that dirty clothes go in the hamper, not all over the floor. Rarely does he make any effort to make the bed or sweep up the floor. Housework seems beneath him even though he always says he will help out next time. And if you think he is every going to learn to put the dishes away, guess again.
- Your guy is always late. He seems not to understand the concept of being on time and it can make you more than a little crazy as you end up having to explain to everyone why you are late. Of course, he blames you.
- The guy you are married to seems to think it perfectly fine to shout and scream at the television during a sports game. His wild antics and loud and obnoxious voice rings throughout the house and if his favorite team loses, he his hell to live with.
- Your husband knows how to get on your nerves when he wants to start-up a fight. He likes to try to get inside your head. Even though you know he plays this mind game, you fall for it anyway and it just ruffles your feathers.
- Your partner gets on your nerves when he insists that he must make a late night run to get some fast food despite the fact you slaved away in the kitchen to cook up a wholesome meal.
- It can be truly annoying when your husband wakes you up in the middle of the night wanting to have sex. When you reject him he goes into his victim routine or creates a scene essentially disturbing your ability to get back to sleep.
Are You Overly Sensitive To Your Husband’s Odd Habits?
Do you ever feel like just putting on the headphones as a way to escape all things about your husband? Does he annoy you so much that the only way to silence him is to literally silence him?
It is probably fair to say that husbands all over can do and say things that get on their wives’ nerves. It is easy to become exasperated if the guy you are married to seems to have a knack for ruffling your feathers.
But at what point should we question ourselves as to whether we ourselves are being overly sensitive about our spouse’s behavior.
For example, a women named Taylor reached out to me and told me about her situation. At first, it seemed to her that her husband could do no right.
But later, she realized that the problem wasn’t so much that her husband was difficult to live with. It wasn’t really her preoccupation with a few of his undesirable habits that was so much the problem.
It turned out, her husband was really not that far off the norm. Taylor’s problem in adjusting to some of her husband’s behaviors had more to do with her learning to adapt to her new environment.
She had been thrusted into a relationship which was something that was both glorious and frightening for her. But when they moved in together, the relationship began to fray at the edges due to some of her insecurities.
Let me explain by way of letting Taylor relate her story.
“I was sure we were not going to make it. We moved in together about a month ago. Those first couple of weeks were some really tough days. I was not accustom to living with another guy. I had not done it before and everything about living with another man 24/7 was both wonderful and awful. I know I shouldn’t feel that way. But I have alway been a bit of a perfectionist and sometimes think too much about things that seem out-of-place. Or if I can’t get my way about certain little, even inconsequential things, it bothers me. He is the opposite. Easygoing. When he wouldn’t conform to how I thought he should act, I would get annoyed. I would get mad at him because he wouldn’t get mad. I know that sounds crazy! I was uptight a lot. He thought nothing of it and figured I would get use to it. I didn’t realize I was this way so much until we had lived together for a few weeks. It’s part me Chris. Not all him. I get insecure about stuff and I think my anxiousness plays into my fears. Any advice on how to chill out. That’s what he says all the time.
Is Your Husband Truly Annoying
But sometimes it is not that you have an insecure attachment approach to relationships. Sometimes when these annoyances start stacking up, they can compound. And if your husband or boyfriend is not willing to listen to your concerns and make some changes, things can start sliding downhill.
Some men will go out of their way to get on your nerves as a perverse way to get back at you. Sick, isn’t it. But some guys have this kind of makeup. Personally, I think it is a mind game some men play to try to control you.
Sometimes it is just a bad boy complex. There are men out there who are mean-spirited about doing or saying things to intentionally aggravate or badger their wife.
When the marriage is reduced to a test of wills, with the husband constantly taunting and testing his wife to exact some kind of revenge or measure of control, then it suffices to say such relationships have a short fuse.
Don’t get me wrong. There will always be some give and take and all of us would benefit if we were more tolerant of each other’s vices.
But if you are at a stage in the marriage where you are supremely annoyed with your husband’s behavior and are disillusioned with his ways, then you should be reminded that your relationship is not a life sentence.
I have coached many women who have been married for years who go on to tell me how miserable they have been with their husband’s ways. You do have options. We all do.
If you have made good faith efforts to work through some serious compatibility issues, yet the man you are with is still driving you crazy, then don’t feel like you can’t call for a short-term separation to get some space.
Absence is an interesting thing. It moves us in different ways.
It can make us appreciate our partner’s more and motivate couples to change.
But it can also cause you to “see the light” and realize that not all relationships are going to work out as you once hoped.
This is what Vanessa learned.
She surveyed the past and looked at the future and decided she needed to set off on a new course. It wasn’t something she entered into lightly. I know that because I worked with her for a good spell.
Just getting out from under her husband’s control for a trial separation had a powerful emotional effect on her as she realized how much of “herself” she had left behind and she wanted that girl back.
Don’t ever forget. Life offers us many paths. Don’t stay on the one that makes you unhappy and unfulfilled.
