What To Do When Everything About Your Partner Is Starting To Annoy You

It’s completely normal to get annoyed by someone you love, especially if you spend the majority of your time with them, so stop feeling guilty about it. The next step is figuring out how to act so you can remedy the situation. Below are 10 suggestions for things you can do if your partner is driving you nuts with their every move. Figuring out a solution likely won’t happen in a day, but they may put you on a better path to working things through and doing what’s best for you.

1. Ask If Your Reaction Is Warranted. The first thing to do is a bit of self-reflection. Before approaching your partner with your concerns, it’s important to question if you’re acting appropriately. This doesn’t mean you should invalidate or dismiss your own feelings. Rather, it’s about asking whether your expectations are too high or unrealistic. Think about what you want from your partner and how you’d react if you were in their shoes.
2. Try To Talk It Through. There’s a reason experts say communication is key in a relationship. After evaluating what it is about your partner that’s annoying you and what you’d like to see done differently, bring it to your partner’s attention. But do it in an efficient way. Warn him ahead of time that something is weighing on your mind and ask if the two of you can set time aside to speak about it. Remember, be sure to give him space to speak his mind and don’t assume he’ll automatically agree with everything you say. It’s a tough pill to swallow when your partner calls you annoying, so he may not be open to considering resolutions in the moment. Give him time and space to process what you’ve told him.
3. Invest In Noise-Cancelling Headphones. A quick-fix solution may be to invest in a pair of noise-canceling headphones. This could be the solution you need if it’s your boyfriend’s sounds that are getting on your nerves, especially if you live in the same space together. Maybe the noise from his video game controller bothers you or he has a habit of humming. This would annoy most people, especially if you’re struggling to work from home or focus on other tasks. You can literally tune him out with a good pair of headphones, or conversely, ask him to wear a pair if that would help.
4. Don’t Do Everything Together. Sometimes the reason someone is getting on your nerves is that you’re spending too much time together. This is especially true now that most people are living under some sort of lockdown. Even if you’re madly in love, you still need your own space. Make sure that you’re not attached at the hip. Even if you can’t go out of the house, on your own projects and hobbies. Create distance between the two of you by going into another room and having some necessary ‘me time.’
5. Start Getting Out More.  As per the last entry, a little space can do the two of you a world of good. But sometimes it’s not enough to go to another area of the house. Especially if you live together, it’s important to get out of your shared space on a regular basis. That can be tricky in today’s age, but it can be as simple as going out for a 30-minute walk. Not only will it give you space from each other, but it will help you clear your head. Exercise is proven to improve your headspace.
6. Try To Find A Way To Compromise.  Even if you communicate to your partner what you want from them, the solution to your problems may not be as easy as them stopping whatever it is that annoys you. Perhaps you hate your partner does his remote work on the dining room table or you can’t stand that he wakes up so early in the morning. It’s unreasonable to expect that your partner will completely transform his behavior to stop annoying you. But it is reasonable to expect a compromise. While you talk things out, consider what you both could do to remedy the situation and meet somewhere in the middle. It’ll take effort from both of you, even if you feel like he’s the only one who’s in the wrong.
7. Address If It’s Something Deeper. Sometimes we think we’re annoyed by our significant other’s little behaviors, but it’s actually pointing to something deeper bothering us. Maybe he did something in the past to hurt you, or alternatively, you could be stressed out about something completely different and are just taking it out on him. While doing self-reflection, question if there’s anything else bothering you. You may find that you’re the one who has to do some internal work, not your significant other.
8. Focus On What You Can Control. As has been said, your partner may not be able to fully stop whatever it is that’s annoying you, especially if it’s everything he does that’s getting on your last nerve. It’s important to remember that we can’t control what other people do, but we can control our own actions. Stop trying to control what you can’t. Rather, distract yourself and redirect your energy into something productive, like work, hobbies, or other passions. Having a distraction will make you less concerned with and annoyed by whatever your partner is doing.
9. Respect Your Partner’s Personal Space. This goes hand-in-hand with the last point. Even if something your partner is doing annoys you, that doesn’t mean you necessarily have the right to tell them to stop or change their behavior, especially if you live together. You need to respect that your partner is their own person with different habits and character traits. It’s important to accept your significant other for all of their faults. So, in some cases, you may just need to suck it up. This of course depends on a case-by-case situation. There will be times your partner is doing something legitimately annoying, like refusing to wash their dirty dishes. In that case, you have a right to say something about. But other times, you may have to accept they have a certain way of doing things, and accepting that is just part of the package deal of being their girlfriend.
10. Ask If The Relationship Has Run Its Course. Finally, if you try all of the aforementioned tips and you continue to be put on edge by your partner’s behavior, it may be time to reevaluate the relationship. If you’re more annoyed than loving towards your significant other, your annoyance may be stemming from the fact that you internally want out of the relationship. Your unconscious desire to leave the relationship could be manifesting in a way that makes it seem like you’re annoyed by his behavior when you’re actually just annoyed and over the relationship in general. Realizing this takes a lot of self-reflection, so make sure you’re confident about needing to break up before bringing it up to your significant other.