Husband interrupts her 20 times a day to say ‘I love you’

Dear Carolyn: I married late in life, at 46, and prior to my marriage I was (mostly) happy as a single person. Husband had been married before and really identifies as part of a couple.

He has this thing he does that I find super-annoying, and then feel guilty about being annoyed by, and I can’t quite decide if it’s a sweet thing I should learn to embrace or if it’s subtle controlling/gaslighting behavior.

I am absorbed in reading/cooking/cleaning/other, and husband intently tries to get my attention: Honey? Hey Honey? Hooooooney? And when I answer (sometimes annoyed, sometimes sweetly), he says, “I love you!”

I get this sounds like he’s a sweetheart, but he does this multiple times a day, and honestly I feel like I just can’t concentrate on anything with him around and find myself getting annoyed more and more and more. Makes me feel like a supreme b---h because the message is so sweet, and what wife doesn’t want to hear “I love you” 20 times per day? Am I an ungrateful rat b---h, or is he deliberately trying to make me focus on him for every waking second of my day?

— Annoyed Ingrate

Wow. Do you always invalidate yourself like this? Because that’s some powerful venom you’ve aimed inward, just for having your own opinion. The misogyny in your language alone stops me cold.

Maybe you are the most supremely ungratefully annoyed rat b---h for other reasons, but you certainly aren’t one based on what you’ve shared here. And be assured, please, that even the most supremely ungratefully annoyed rat b---h has a right to her own feelings and her own preferences.

If you don’t like being interrupted, then that’s your prerogative. If you find this gesture of his super-annoying and needy, then that’s your prerogative.

If you don’t want to hear “I love you” 20 times daily — I don’t either, by the way, because to me that sounds unctuous and suffocating and not sweethearty in the least — then that’s your prerogative and no one gets to tell you otherwise.

And if your husband doesn’t respect the way you feel about his interruptions, then his message is no longer a sweet one (if it ever was), because how could it be sweet to do something repeatedly for someone that you know irritates that person?

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