Do you ever feel like your partner just won’t back off? It seems like you walk in the door and they immediately lay into you for all the things you did or didn’t do throughout the day. You try to ask for space so you can catch your breath, but they just ramp up their accusations and demands. This leaves you feeling defensive and belittled, angry your partner – someone you want to trust – won’t give you even a few minutes of peace. You’ve tried defending yourself, you’ve tried reassuring them you’ll do better next time, you’ve even tried just shutting down. None of these seem to work. Your left feeling frustrated and helpless to do anything about the constant nagging.
Here’s what’s happening for your partner. They aren’t seeing something about your relationship as fair, causing them to notice countless examples of this throughout the day. Their own mental load, burdened under a dozen to-dos, doesn’t give them much patience for your – often valid – reasons. This leaves your partner to stew, stuck with their own frustrations and loneliness as they consider their unfair situation. When you finally meet up after the work day, you don’t get to interact with your partner early in the stewing process. You hear the end result. The end result is a frustrated place asking for change.
Little reassurances don’t work at this point. Your partner isn’t just asking you to do the dishes more often. Your reassurance to do the dishes more often just falls on deaf ears. As far as you can tell, though, you just offered them exactly what they’re asking for! How is this fair?! Well, you two need to have a talk.
What kind of talk?
This isn’t a problem solving talk. Problem solving happens once you both know you’re on the same page, not before. As such, you have to sit down for a potentially tense talk where you each offer a different kind of reassurance. You can’t be in this just to get the nagging to stop – that will become painfully clear very early in this conversation. No, you have to be in this conversation because you each can tell how hard things have gotten for each other.
You have to see this pain in one another. This dynamic sucks for both of you. You don’t want to be nagged and your partner certainly doesn’t want to come across as nagging. The first step, then, is to listen to each other patiently as you share what this is like for you. Hear your partner. Listen to their frustration and loneliness. Then, share your own pain. Tell them what it’s like to fear seeing them every day. Tell them what it’s like to dread coming home, just waiting for the next resentful rant.
That’s the hard part. The next part isn’t exactly easy, but it feels better. Give each other reassurance. You don’t want to see your partner in this pain – you want them to feel loved and appreciated. Let them give you the same reassurance. You have to know you matter to each other, or the problem-solving feels like placating. “Stop yelling at me, I’ll do the dishes!” is a very different reassurance than, “I don’t want you to feel alone in housework. I’m happy to do the dishes.”
If you do this right, your relationship will not only include less nagging, it will be stronger than ever. You need to be able to talk about hard things and, every time you do, it gets easier.