Scarleteen

What's a pet peeve of yours, and if you've addressed it in a relationship (romantic or not), how did you do it? How did it go?

One that's come up in one of my relationships has been as a result of differences between my partner's and my preferences around neatness and "stuff", specifically shoes. She is the type to take off her shoes when she gets home and leave them wherever she took them off - in the bedroom, in the bathroom, in the doorway, in the middle of the floor. I'm more of an everything-has-its-place kind of person, so when I come home from work every day, I usually take my shoes off and put them in the same spot in our bedroom.
I was getting tired of tripping over random shoes or feeling overwhelmed by the messiness of our apartment, so I had to push myself to communicate with her about how it bothered me. It went pretty well, and she's been more conscious about leaving her shoes out since. (And in asking if it was okay if I posted about this, she reminded me about how I keep leaving spoons around the house after I've finished my yogurt, which is a pet peeve of hers that we've already discussed. Ah, the joys of cohabitation.)

My cohabitating partner and I have had some conflict over chores in the past; there were a few things, like washing the dishes or scooping out the litter boxes, that they would say they'd do but not take care of, so I found myself either doing them myself or having to remind them over and over again until it felt like nagging. It felt like I was still "in charge" of those tasks even though it was something they were responsible for based on how we split the chores.

Neither of us are great at confrontation and after I told them a few times that it was really frustrating to me and nothing changed, I held that frustration inside me until it got REALLY intense and I had to explicitly say that this smallish detail of our domestic lives was causing me a lot of stress and I was feeling ignored and brushed off when I brought it up. It felt like kind of a silly thing to get upset about, but the frustration was bleeding into my other interactions with them which was a pretty big sign that something had to change. Happily we were able to address it!

(I'm not perfect myself; I tend to accumulate clutter in areas I use a lot and since I work from home the coffee table is constantly covered in my stuff & they have to ask/remind me to tidy up sometimes!!)