Poltergeists & Paper Cuts: Learning to Love the Irritating Stuff

The kitchen scene transports me to the one in the horror movie The Sixth Sense where the mom leaves the kitchen for five seconds and returns to find almost all the cupboards and drawers open while the young boy sits hands out, frozen in terror at the table.

Only it’s me in my kitchen, it’s 2:16 a.m., and I’ve just turned on the light to fetch a glass of water.

Five.

Five cupboard doors are wide opened.

Only I’m not terrified, I’m pissed. Ron did this. He always does this. He’s always done this. He opens doors and doesn’t close them. I don’t know why. (Just like I don’t know why I change outfits three times every morning and leave the clothes piled on the bench. His open doors are my clothes piles.)

At that point in my marriage, 18 years in, I would have been happier if it were poltergeists. I would have rather dealt with outside demons than any in my own marriage which wasn’t going very well at the time. I’m pissed because open doors are the one-more-thing, the one-too-many thing in a string of things he does that irritate me which makes it the biggest, most significant thing.

Consistent minor irritations in a relationship can fester into major irritations — paper cuts that, over time, can result in a marriage amputation. Lest you think I exaggerate, I can tell you that nearly all my parents’ friends and my friends’ parents, and even my own parents’ marriage ended in divorce.

And the reasons, at least those that played out in public, seemed just as inconsequential as an open cupboard door.

How do we let little inconsequential things grow out of proportion?

How do open cupboards rank destroyer?

It’s not preposterous. It’s reality.

The little inconsequential things (nobody was hurt in the process) done often enough or with seemingly no regard to their tormented, really do matter.

Time and repetitiveness fester cute idiosyncrasies into paper cuts. What we once overlooked now glare us down into a showdown. For example, at one time, you might have been able to overlook your spouse being late all the time, or perhaps you even thought it cute. But now it seems inconsiderate. Or perhaps when your spouse interrupted you often, you interpreted that as simply being passionate about the conversation. “He/she is just so passionate!” you beam. Now it’s just irritating. Now it’s rude. The irritations eventually turn into little painful paper cuts.

Too many relationships die of paper cuts.

I lean in, hunched over, and push at the countertop’s granite edges, hang my head and close my eyes. I suck in air and blow it out slowly, making the oxygen last, fuel for deeper thought.

Get a grip! This is ridiculous!

What to do?

And then I do what I always do when I am in turmoil: I ask myself the most basic question I can conjure:

What do I care more about, open cupboards or my husband?

I turn around and lean on the countertop. I fold my arms and cock my head. I stare at the cupboards, wide open, gaping silent in the moonlit kitchen like the mouth in Munch’s The Scream.

Someday, I am going to wake up and there won’t be any open cupboards. And that would mean that Ron is gone. And I’ll wish I had those open cupboards more than anything in the world.

At that moment, I learned to embrace open cupboards. I learned to embrace all the string of things, the irritating things. More than that, I love them. They comfort me. They are the quirks that help make Ron, Ron. And when they occur, it means he’s in my life.

Now.

Upstairs.

In our bed.

Safe and healthy and snuggled under a linen sheet and an oversized down comforter.

And I am content.

Letting small things go, sage advice touted by elders and experts, isn’t enough.

I learned to reframe my thinking.

If I can learn to embrace irritations and frame them instead as idiosyncrasies—idiosyncrasies of the man I’d lie down on train tracks for—then I need only battle the offensive once to be successful. It’s better than “letting it go” each and every time, pokes of irritations for eternity.

“Open cupboards?” you ask. “Oh, that’s just Ron. Isn’t it sweet?” I gush now, without a trace of sarcasm.

Here we are, nearly forty-one years into our marriage, forty-five as a couple.

Ron still leaves cupboards open. I still leave clothes piles.

We couldn’t be happier.