Does your mom, dad or sibling have a particular habit that just simply drives you nuts?
Burping out loud, leaving the door open, cluttered mess… these sort of things?
Now, take these irritations and multiply it by at least ten.
That’s the stress level of everyday married life.
Things that you’re so used to do, your partner simply doesn’t and it boggles your mind on how much common sense can be so uncommon. Therefore, in lieu of my wife being too busy running our business (Note: Christmas is our peak season), I now present to you my “Wife Drives me Nuts” habits.
Hair, hair and more hair everywhere!
I grew up with two sisters a mom. People naturally shed hair. Google says an average of 100 hairs fall of everyday. But my gosh, can my wife really shed!
Here’s her hairbrush for a yucky visual description. That’s how much hair she can shed in just a single brushing!
Now, I have an issue with hair.
I hate seeing it on the floor of the bathroom. Ironically, God has seen it fit to give me a wife that definitely sheds more than a 100 strands a day.
I really fail to understand where it all comes from, or more mysteriously how it ends up at the back of the toilet bowl!
Like seriously?!?!?
There is no swirling air current inside our 10sqm bathroom.
The wife doesn’t even shrug at the fact that we have that much hair on the floor!
So my mornings are spent sweeping and collecting the hair from the floor and the shower area, and repeat cycle at night before going to bed.
Laundry blues
“Why do you have to do the laundry?” my wife asks every so often. “I only do it when I have nothing left to wear. This is how I used to do it when I lived abroad.”
Now wifey has enough clothes that would last her months if she doesn’t do the laundry. According to her, her longest record was three months without doing the laundry.
“I would just wear the clean clothes I still have,” she beamed proudly. “Why waste water doing the laundry. Save the earth!”
FACEPALM.
I used to have the same process when my mom always always packed laundry detergent every time we travel, and would yell at us to give the laundry every night. Why launder when you can just pack enough?
Well 15+ years of doing this made its way into a habit.
Thus, the wife snickered at me during our 1st week of the honeymoon when I walked 2km just to find a laundry service in Milan. And when I came back with clean clothes, gave me a loud scolding because I told her that I found one and paid 15 Euros for the service.
“WHHAAATTTT???? HOW MUCH?!??!?” she moaned. “That’s highway robbery!!!”
I shrugged. It was the sweet old lady who did it and I don’t mind parting off my Euros if it meant clean clothes.
Two days later when in Venice, I gleefully squealed when our AirBnB place had a washing machine with powder soap, promptly getting a “What dafuq” look from the wife.
So yeah laundry is my department which I do every 2-3 days depending how much my wife recycles hers sleepwear. An overflowing laundry basket drives me nuts.
Clothes don’t walk by themselves to the washing machine and fold themselves you know.
And if my wife don’t care about the laundry, then I’d have to do it!
3 of a kind. Maybe 4…
I occasionally channel surf and land on a show in Lifetime channel called Hoarders, of which the mother-in-laws house can actually pass in for an episode. Years of training have made my wife a quasi hoarder.
While no, we don’t have piles and piles of stuff and endless boxes — yet — the wife likes to buy and stock bathroom supplies, so at any time we have 3 toothpastes, 4 toothbrushes, and 18 rolls of tissue paper at any time of the day. Let’s not even get started on the soap and the shampoo. I think we have enough Safeguards to last us two years.
But the kicker discovery I made is that she has 3 eyelash curlers!
Who needs or has 3 eyelash curlers?!?!?!
“I do, got a problem?”
“Nope”. Eeep!
And my bathroom clean freakiness demands that I wash the eye lash curler of accumulated gummy lash goop every week… All 3 of them. Can you believe that before she met me, she washes it once every six months?
Oh not to mention she does the extremely Chinese thing when checking out of hotel rooms, which is to take each and every shampoo, conditioner, perfume, lotion bottle there is… even the tissue paper!
Our luggage before checking out:
Check out the tissue, free water and the hotel lotion.
“What??? I paid for the room! These are mine,” she says as she zips up the back with her goodies.
For the love of squeegee
Before you start thinking that how come it’s all complaints and gripes, rest assured it’s not.
One delightful thing we discovered is that we both like to squeegee the water droplets on our shower mirror. So much so we actually 3 different squeegees, but the red one is our favorite, which wipes clean and good.
And it’s not only the shower glass we squeegee, but also the mirror.
The feeling we both get when wiping the glass.
Ahhhhhhhhh….. Squuuuueeeeee-Geeeeeeeeeee
Low battery bane
I also have a slightly battery life anxiety.
I cannot stand not to have my gadgets almost always fully charged.
My wife couldn’t care less.
So every trip I’m in charge of all the chargers.
Charge, chargers get it? Hahahahahaa, oh never mind.
I’m not particularly techy-ish but I do like cruising the cellphone gadget stalls to see what new quirky things they have, or what they say in Taiwan, qi qi guai guai de dong xi.
We each have a night table and I actually have 3 cords for my 2 devices and while browsing the internet, I came upon the Quirky desktop charging dock, and I swear, it is the most elegant solution I have seen.
Scouring eBay, I found a used one for US$15 and promptly bought it and gave it to her for Christmas. Here it is front and back.
Fits her iphone and ipad very well.
Binge watching
Everyone binge watches, whether its LOTR marathon or The Simpsons.
And for this I thank almighty God that my wife barfs at shows like the Real Housewives of whatever.
Married life is about sharing and spending time together doing what you want.
My go-to channels before are always the documentary ones like History, Nat Geo and Discovery.
But since getting married, I have discovered a whole host of shows that I would otherwise not normally pick when visiting the DVD tiangge place.
6 months into marriage, we’ve already watched Scandal, House of Cards, The Americans, Orange is the New Black and so much more, and I’ve enjoyed each and every one, and am very happy I have someone to share it with.
On a slightly off topic note, I got a bunch of toe socks for Christmas and I have read somewhere that this is one of the dumbest fashion inventions ever, but I absolutely like them.
I think it’s cute, my wife wrinkled and brow and gave me the “Dafuq” once look, which promptly had me grabbing a leg and putting it on her foot.
Cute isn’t it? Comes in pink as well.
So there you go. There are things that drive me nuts, and there are things I enjoy being married. And the things that drive me nuts don’t make me more miserable. It’s just the basic difference between two people.
We should not let the stuff that drive us nuts drive any wedge between us. In fact, it should endear us more to the other, just as my wife, somehow.. somewhat… given her many quirky habits make me want to love her more.
Wait, wife’s calling for us to watch a torrented movie of The Interview.
Let me know if there are also other quirky things you hate/love from your partner. Gotta go guys!
