My wife, bless her heart, leaves everything partially open. Not even just open, but she'll screw the lid on jars just enough where if I pick it up by the top they'll drop. It drives me crazy.
People always think that they are compatible if they share more or less a common understanding in big subjects, but stuff like these really test you.
One of my exes hated onion, and when I look back, this made my life way more insufferable than having to hear the (to me) weird political opinions. "Oh I'd like to have this salad but please no onion, and please don't use a knife that's used to cut onion when preparing!". "I think I smell onion, apparently they ignored the knife comment, can you tell them to pack this and maybe you can eat it back home and I'll just go to the [insert food stall name], so meet in 15 mins there?". Ugh.
I've had a few girlfriends and female friends who "don't like onion". It's incredibly common. I simply never mention onion again and not once have I received a complaint about the presence of onion in pretty much every single dish I prepare. I think it's just the word they don't like.
It would be a complete deal breaker if they actually complained about onion or imagined they could taste it.
Asking nicely and not protesting when they didn't manage is okay in my book, to be honest. That was not the problem. Having to experience stuff like these (everyone has their quirks) regularly and learning to deal with it is the hard part in a relationship, is what I'm saying.
Having to experience weird behaviour on a more or less regular basis is not how relationships are supposed to work, thats what I'm saying. There are spouses out there who treat their partner with respect and love, not like a tool to be used to fix up anoyances in life.
Thats my point. Certain people just love drama, and even want casual online discussions like this one to show how dangerous the world is, and how right picky people are in being right... Drama(queen)s all around, what would our world be without first-world problems...
I've met a lot of women who do stuff like this... I asked one why and she told me it's because they don't want to be a bother. Fully closing the door makes noise, screwing on lids can make it hard for people to open them later. So they don't. They close it just enough and leave the object in that almost there state.
I think this is more an anecdote than anything else. My wife leaves all sorts of stuff open, and it's really because she's not paying attention, i.e. most of the time she's not fully present.
I'm glad to have read this, it gives me a little comfort to see that other people deal with same issues. Sometimes I just close the door for her when she's in the restroom.
I feel like a lot of these habits come from having lived alone for a while after leaving home. I have a lot of habits that I'm 100% certain I didn't do growing up because my mom would tell me not to. I would probably have kept them if I had started living with other people later. My mom on the other hand now does the things she used to tell me not to and I can't help but think that it is related to not caring anymore after living in solitude for decades.
My wife leaves the toilet door open when she's in there, which annoys me. One day I asked her why and she told me she used to do it deliberately when the children were little so she could hear what they were up to, and talk to them if they needed it. It's now just a habit. Makes sense now I know.
Everything, literally everything from the root of this thread until the parent comment applies to my wife too. I am so relieved that I can stop worrying about it now.
I'm getting older and one of the things I started to notice is that men are just there, doing things that are generally... straightforward. I mean I guess posting on hacker news is probably pretty strange to a lot of people - so ignore that.
Anyway, women however, I feel like they build these neurotic behaviors - like learned things that just stick with them forever. Like ouch, the pan was hot, don't do that again, but for EVERYTHING. So by the time they are old, just nothing they do makes any sense, to anyone, even other women.
Reminds me of the stereotype that women will tell you something that happened in the most expansive way possible with all this context that doesn't really matter while guys will just tell you what happened.
I've heard the explanation that men just tend to prefer to think in more concrete terms. "What happened" is sometimes met with a detailed social analysis filled with motivations and states-of-mind about the story that unfolded and sometimes met with some cold facts about precisely what events occurred without any speculation as to why or what impact it had on people, and this tends to split along gender lines. The classic "what are you thinking about" works the same way. Women tend to be thinking about conceptual things like their ambitions or happiness or relationships, whereas men tend to be thinking about concrete things like that one cabinet with the loose hinges in the bathroom.
This is, of course, not a universal rule. It's just an observation about tendencies.
Actually this might rather be coming from an autism spectrum. This work mate, a very fine programmer I must say, starts any point he might have with a few minutes long background presentation. I can't say that I get much value from that intro, but that's his way so I say let him have it. And we're never under that time pressure to need to interrupt him anyway.
I find that everyone has these quirks, regardless of gender. Sometimes it makes the world a more interesting place. Sometimes it's utterly baffling. Like my friend who refuses to use tissues because his parents taught him to blow his nose with a paper towel instead. Maybe we're the weird ones for believing Big Kleenex's ads though!
One gender difference is that when these quirks are presented to men, they're a bit more likely to change to a more sensible method. Women tend to get annoyed about the male tendency to suggest solutions to everything. Annoyance can motivate stubbornness.
IMHO it's less of a bother to have to open a jar and much more of a bother if you pick up a not-fully-closed jar by the lid and then have to clean the kitchen of jam and broken glass, but YMMV...
Agree. Also an issue with juice bottles with lots of deposition, if the cap is not on tight and you forget to check you end up with at best a hand dripping full of juice (if the cap was screwed on but did not seal, so you just got some liquid through the cap) and at worst a repainted wall (if the cap was barely even on, and shaking sent it flying).
My flatmate does this with kitchen cupboard doors, and, most annoyingly, the microwave. She'll open the microwave to stop it, takes her food out and, just ... leaves it open. Then when I close it later it will start up again with nothing inside. Arrrgh!
> My flatmate does this with kitchen cupboard doors, and, most annoyingly, the microwave. She'll open the microwave to stop it, takes her food out and, just ... leaves it open. Then when I close it later it will start up again with nothing inside. Arrrgh!
So? Hit the cancel button when you close it - you have to be right there to close it after all.
TBH, I do this too, because I hate putting in some milk to warm for cereal and getting out warm milk flavoured with and smelling of the curry we warmed last night.
Anytime the microwave oven is used for aromatic food or any meal with flavouring, leave the door open.
Not sure about that. It's normal to open a microwave periodically to inspect, stir the food etc to ensure it is heating evenly. Automatically cancelling the timer each time you open it would be very annoying.
Exactly! If there is any moisture left and it can't dry, it could start to mold.
That's actually a problem with my dishwasher, which can't be left slightly open (it always closes shut), and me being a single, so it takes time to get a full machine. If I want to prevent mold I either have to start the dishwasher half empty (which is counterintuitive) or to collect the dirty dishes outside the dishwasher until enough have accumulated to fill it. But then you have all the dirty dishes lying around. Argh!
Lol. This sounds like my house. My spouse and my nephew (who lives with us) cannot for the life of them ever close any kitchen cabinet doors. They both always leave them ajar, never leaving them fully opening but never fully closing them. It drives me nuts.
Even just installing those stick-on rubber bumpers makes a huge difference. A soft, satisfying "thunk" when you close a cabinet door rather than a horrible bang/clatter.
Both seat and lid should be closed before flushing, to reduce spray. Has the additional benefit of requiring both men & women to lift something before using it.
