A Spouse Can Be Perfect for You and Still Drive You Crazy

My perfect husband sometimes runs behavior experiments on me.

I adore my husband. Even people who don’t know me very well generally understand that fact quickly. I make no bones about it. My husband is awesome, he’s the closest to perfect for me I’ll ever see, and I love him to bits.

All that being true, it is also true that sometimes he does things that I find irritating. This is a story about one of those times.

We purchased a new dishwasher a few months ago. It has 3 racks. The top rack has spaces for placing utensils on their sides in rows. We decided we liked this better than the basket in the bottom rack. Without the basket, we have extra room for pots and pans.

This all sounds way too structured.

My husband followed my lead in the way we have placed the utensils in the spaces. I started off by putting all utensils going the same direction to the side. For whatever reason, I placed them so they were pointing to the front of the dishwasher. The forks together, then the spoons, then the knives.

This all sounds way too structured. Don’t think I’m unaware of it. But it made sense. You can grab all the forks with one hand, turn, and plop them in the fork area of the organizer. Then turn back, grab the spoons with one hand, the butter knives with another and put those away quickly.

There was no real discussion about this. It just happened. It kept happening for months. At least six months, maybe longer.

One day I opened the dishwasher and pulled out the rack to place a spoon in. The utensils were in the same groupings. Instead of facing toward the dishwasher door, however, they faced toward the back. I paused a second to absorb it, laughed at myself for caring, and put in the spoon.

This direction persisted for a few days. Long enough that I didn’t think about it each time I loaded or unloaded the utensils. Then he made his next move.

He saved it for a Saturday morning. While I slept unsuspectingly, he unloaded the dishwasher. Then he decided to double down on his experiment. He took whatever dirty utensils were in the sink and loaded them.

Who on earth CARES if the forks face away from the spoons?

Sometime later, I woke up and wandered into the kitchen. I made a bowl of instant oatmeal and a cup of mocha. When I took my used bowl and spoon to the dishwasher, I made the discovery.

The forks were where the spoons usually were. They were facing the front of the dishwasher. The spoons were in the spot reserved for the forks. Guess which way they were facing? THE BACK. They were positioned to face the opposite direction.

The butter knives were minding their own business in the spot always reserved for them.

I paused. I knew it was ridiculous that I cared. Who on earth CARES if the forks face away from the spoons? I do. I care.

The main reason I decided to say something? Even though I was completely aware my twitchiness was ridiculous? Because if I didn’t, the next experiment my loving husband ran on me would be to mix up the forks, spoons, and knives. I knew it.

It would be chaos in the dishwasher and I wasn’t having it. I wasn’t having any of it.

I also knew if I waited to object, my reaction would be much louder and more ridiculous than the one I was going to allow this time.

I walked into our bathroom where he was brushing his teeth. “You are driving me crazy,” I said. “You are doing it on purpose which is part of what is making me crazy. If I thought it was an accident, that you didn’t think about it before you did it, I wouldn’t care half as much.”

He spit into the sink, met my eyes in the mirror, and said, “Are we talking about the dishwasher?”

I leaned in, “You are seriously driving me crazy right now.”

“I hope you paid attention to the word ‘crazy’ in your description.”

We both laughed. I went back into the kitchen and reorganized those dirty utensils. We have gone back to the original pattern of placement ever since.

I am wondering what experiment he will run on his twitchy wife the next time he is bored.

Here are a couple of things my husband has said that made me laugh.