Couple will need to work together on peculiarities
Carolyn Hax
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. I can’t decide whether it’s a sweet thing I should embrace or whether it’s subtle controlling/gaslighting behavior.
But I don’t want to hear “I love you” 20 times per day.
If you find his comments and gestures super annoying and needy, then that’s your prerogative. If you’re the wife who doesn’t want to hear “I love you” 20 times daily — this one sounds suffocating and not sweethearty in the least — then that’s also 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?
Your husband is as entitled as you are to his feelings and preferences. And sometimes an “I love you” is just an “I love you.” But such entitlement extends only to the end of each person’s actions and feelings. It covers what each of you does, not how the other person responds.
Meaning, he can say what he wants, but he is not owed the reaction he wants. And he, likewise, does not owe you a change of his emotional makeup just to satisfy you.
Committed couples, however, do owe it to each other to try to find ways each of them can meet the other’s needs while still being true to themselves. And not induce tooth-grinding irritation in the process. The pillars of this approach are:
• Self-respect, where each of you identifies your emotional needs and owns them.
• Respect for each other, and thereby not dismissing, ignoring or trying to change the other’s emotional needs;
• Communication, so you can both say what you like, don’t like, need and want instead of expecting minds to be read or assuming preferences to be shared;
• Patience, so you can act on what you hear instead of reacting to it.
For you two, this might mean he owns and articulates his need for together time, and you own and articulate your need for alone time, and you then deliberately build some of each into your days. For this to work, both of you have to operate from a place of respect, and the respect has to flow both ways.
If he can’t take no for an answer, and you can’t comfortably give yes for an answer, to your mutual satisfaction, then your marriage arrives at a crossroads: Stay in irritation, or go in peace.