Irritation is an Invitation

Marriage is a great opportunity for irritation. We are so different from each other in so many ways!

The way he drives. The way she calls the kids. The way he clears his throat. The way she folds the socks.

Every day there are countless ways that we irritate each other! That is the beauty of marriage! Every day we get unnumbered opportunities to be irritated. Or to choose something else.

That something else might be called compassion or humanity or understanding.

There may be no other place where we have so many opportunities to learn goodness—or irritation—than marriage.

How do we choose goodness over irritation? It starts in the heart. Van Wyck Brooks observed:

"How delightful is the company of generous people, who overlook trifles and keep their minds instinctively fixed on whatever is good and positive in the world about them. People of small caliber are always carping. They are bent on showing their own superiority, their knowledge or prowess or good breeding. But magnanimous people have no vanity, they have no jealousy, and they feed on the true and the solid wherever they find it. And, what is more, they find it everywhere (1948. A Chilmark Miscellany. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., p. 6)."

The key to goodness is generosity of spirit—which is something we either choose or we reject a thousand times a day.

When our spouse does something that could irritate us, we can say to ourselves: There are good reasons she does things that way. We can recognize that our way is not the only way of doing things. This might be called humility.

Nancy and I have a friend who illustrates this well. When we are chatting with him and his wife, she regularly corrects him, “No, dear, that’s not when that happened.” He could be quite irritated with her correcting. He could argue with her or insist that she quit correcting him. But he is a generous man. He typically says, “That sounds right.” He chooses not to turn molehills into battlegrounds.

Are there times when we might challenge actions that irritate us? Yes! But the way we do that makes all the difference. 

I like the story of the Grapefruit Syndrome told by Lola Walters

"As a young wife, I learned that the taste of marriage could be sweeter if I didn’t focus on my husband’s faults.

My husband and I had been married about two years —just long enough for me to realize that he was a normal man rather than a knight on a white charger —when I read a magazine article recommending that married couples schedule regular talks to discuss, truthfully and candidly, the habits or mannerisms they find annoying in each other. The theory was that if the partners knew of such annoyances, they could correct them before resentful feelings developed.

It made sense to me. I talked with my husband about the idea. After some hesitation, he agreed to give it a try.

As I recall, we were to name five things we found annoying, and I started off. After more than fifty years, I remember only my first complaint: grapefruit. I told him that I didn’t like the way he ate grapefruit. He peeled it and ate it like an orange! Nobody else I knew ate grapefruit like that. Could a girl be expected to spend a lifetime, and even eternity, watching her husband eat grapefruit like an orange? Although I have forgotten them, I’m sure the rest of my complaints were similar.

After I finished, it was his turn to tell the things he disliked about me. Though it has been more than half a century, I still carry a mental image of my husband’s handsome young face as he gathered his brows together in a thoughtful, puzzled frown and then looked at me with his large blue-gray eyes and said, “Well, to tell the truth, I can’t think of anything I don’t like about you, Honey.”

Gasp.

I quickly turned my back, because I didn’t know how to explain the tears that had filled my eyes and were running down my face. I had found fault with him over such trivial things as the way he ate grapefruit, while he hadn’t even noticed any of my peculiar and no doubt annoying ways.

I wish I could say that this experience completely cured me of fault finding. It didn’t. But it did make me aware early in my marriage that husbands and wives need to keep in perspective, and usually ignore, the small differences in their habits and personalities. Whenever I hear of married couples being incompatible, I always wonder if they are suffering from what I now call the Grapefruit Syndrome."

We all get irritated by things our spouses do. Most of the irritations can be ignored. But, when something needs to be discussed, we can make requests rather than complaints. For example, imagine that your spouse picks at your nails when you are holding hands. You could tell her that this makes you crazy. Or you could simply say, “I love holding hands with you. When we do, I love the squeezing and caressing much more than the picking.”

Or maybe you and your spouse have different tastes in food. You might say, “I love that you cook so many healthy vegetables. Somehow, when I grew up, I developed a distaste for eggplant. I love peas, corn, beans, broccoli, and carrots. Maybe you will forgive me if I avoid eggplant.”

It is better to make requests than complaints.

There is something even better than requests at times! I used to complain if Nancy left food on the counter. “Would you put away the food you have used?” I found a better solution. Is the food is bothering me, I put it away. 

The bottom line is that lots of things don’t need to be said. The way your spouse eats grapefruit is their business. So is the way they organize their workspace. Or their preferences in vegetables. On those occasions when something does need to be said, it can be said in a kind way. The common irritations in marriage are an invitation for us to learn and practice both tolerance and kindness.