I hate nagging. My Mother nagged me the whole time I was growing up. I came to despise the image of female nagging. What I want to know is: HOW do you get a male that loves you to do something that you want him to do without nagging? I tell my husband, in a nice and polite way, for the last 13 years: please take your shoes off at the door (he takes em off 36 feet inside the door and leaves them in the middle of the kitchen floor); please put your clothes in the hamper (he throws them on the floor which is a mere 2 feet from the hamper); and "don't chew your ice, your teeth will break off and then you'll look like a Jack O Lantern and I can't have sex with a Jack O Lantern" and "Don't shake your leg like a dog in heat at the kitchen table cuz you'll spill the gravy!"
We live on a ranch. He's trackin in chicken shit, horse shit, hay, mud, whatever else. I love the man to death. He has no vices to speak of. If anyone were to corner the market in vices, it'd be me. He works 50 hours a week, brings home a good check, and I'm a stay at home wife. I *used* to be a stay at home Mom, but the chick has flown the coop, so it's just me. I would tell someone who asked the same question: Get over it, babe! But I feel like he just doesn't appreciate what I do, and thinks I just wanna spend all my days cleanin up after him! So much work could be AVOIDED if he'd take his shoes off at the door. He USED to take them off upstairs on the white carpet until they started charging $200 to clean the carpet up there, now he takes them off in the middle of the kitchen., where it's just me to sweep and mop and trip over them, and they call be Grace. At least I've got him 36 feet from the front door, now.
He likes to pay chiropractic bills, apparently, since he wants me to bend over all the time and pick up all his clothes off the floor, when he could just walk two more feet and put em in the basket. He says I'm getting a little chunky. Well, he ain't no state fair prize winner either. He has quite a spare tire around his waist, too! Maybe iffen he'd take HIS weight seriously, I would too when he says I'm healthy. He isn't abusive at all: he's just "suggestive." And when I get "suggestive" he's extremely insulted. HA!
He does have his clothes washed, meals made, house cleaned .. when he gets home. That's my job. BUT why does *he* get a thank you and a pat on the back for mowing the lawn on the occasional weekend, and I only get some fire ant bites? Why does he get all excited when he's dug a hole for a tree he bought, and demand an audience, when all I get for washing the skid marks in his underwear is the fact that he'll wear them again?
I just want to know: what will it take to get him more interested in helping me out just a wee bit? Am I being a big ole nag? I ask him politely.... but he just soon forgets about it and goes to sleep.. or does whatever... and then I end up having to wait weeks and weeks. I ask him politely... I even say please.. and he says "Okay, I'll do it." It never gets done. But when stuff that pertains to HIM isn't done, I get the second degree. IN fact, he's more of a nag than I'd ever even dreamed of in my worst nighmares.
CG