What does your name mean?

[Ghoulish Delight]

Yup, I'm the same way. If it's something of little importance, and you give me the option of not doing it by asking a question, then you'd better be ready for the consequences of the answer to that question being "no".

[tracilicious]

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

Yup, I'm the same way. If it's something of little importance, and you give me the option of not doing it by asking a question, then you'd better be ready for the consequences of the answer to that question being "no".

First of all, asking the question is just a courtesy. Like I'm making Michael feel like he has a choice on whether or not to do the dishes. Well, he does have a choice, either do the dishes when it's his turn or face my wrath.

Second, I don't want to feel bossy by giving an order, thus the question makes me feel better too.

Of course, if it's my turn to do the dishes and I just really don't want to, I'm known to say something like, "One of us needs to do the dishes tonight and one of us needs to go to the store." Michael hates going to the store, so I know he'll choose dishes 95% of the time. If he chooses store, I can always invent really complicated things that we need that he will have no clue where to find.

Wow. Women are evil.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by tracilicious

First of all, asking the question is just a courtesy.

Courtesy my ass. It's just a device to make sure we completely in the dark as to whether a question is actually a question or not. If I have a choice, give me a choice. If I don't have a choice, don't give me a choice.

[Alex]

Originally Posted by tracilicious

First of all, asking the question is just a courtesy. Like I'm making Michael feel like he has a choice on whether or not to do the dishes.

I suppose it isn't fair, but it isn't uncommon for me to say something like "stop talking like a woman, just tell me what you want."

This also comes up when she wants to do something but rather than saying what she wants to do she asks me what I want to do in the hopes that I'll say what she wants to do. Because she doesn't want to sound bossy.

Just sound bossy. 95% of the time I'll be fine with it and the other 5% we'll talk about it and come to an amicable agreement.

There was a story on This American Life about a guy who's father was really weird and left the family when he was young and was looking for aliens and all that. Anyway, the father was shacked up with a new woman many years later and said they'd developed a way to avoid all arguments. Whenever they were debating options they'd each say "I feel X about that" where X was a number between 1 and 10. Whoever said the highest number got their way.

We've never really done it on anything important but since hearing that story we'll have a conversation like this:

"I want Japanese for dinner."
"Well, I'd prefer Mexican."
"I feel 4 about having Japanese for dinner."
"I feel 7."

And then we go have Mexican. It actually works pretty well but requires both sides to actually admit what they want and evaluate its relative importance.

[tracilicious]

Originally Posted by Alex Stroup

I suppose it isn't fair, but it isn't uncommon for me to say something like "stop talking like a woman, just tell me what you want."

This also comes up when she wants to do something but rather than saying what she wants to do she asks me what I want to do in the hopes that I'll say what she wants to do. Because she doesn't want to sound bossy.

Just sound bossy. 95% of the time I'll be fine with it and the other 5% we'll talk about it and come to an amicable agreement.

The sounding bossy thing is really hard to get over though. Especially when I have a really strong personality and Michael has a very easy going personality. I feel obligated to at least phrase my sentences in a way that gives him some sort of an out.

I'm sure that's no consolation to him in the exact situation you described above. Here's a typical conversation:

Me: What do you want to watch tonight?
Him: I don't care, anything you want to watch is fine.
Me: I could watch either Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, or Star Wars.
Him: Ok, lets watch Harry Potter.
Me (in a disappointed tone): oh, ok.
Him: Well what did you want to watch?
Me: Star Wars
Him: If you knew what movie you wanted to watch why didn't you just say that in the beginning?!!!
Me: I wanted you to be happy too.
Him: I said I didn't care! Just tell me what you want to watch! I. don't. care.

I suppose the puzzling part to me is that he really doesn't care. When I say I don't care, what I usually mean is tell me what you want to watch and then I'll tell you what I want to watch and hopefully you'll agree.

I don't know why word choice is so important. It drives me nuts when he comes up and asks my permission to buy something. What am I? Your mom? He does it because he generally has no clue how much money we have or where it all goes. Yet somehow, "Can I buy this book?" is remarkably different from, "Is there money in the budget for me to buy this book?" Even though, essentially, they are the same question.

Go figure.

[Matterhorn Fan]

Originally Posted by tracilicious

I suppose the puzzling part to me is that he really doesn't care. When I say I don't care, what I usually mean is tell me what you want to watch and then I'll tell you what I want to watch and hopefully you'll agree.

I don't know why word choice is so important.

This is why word choice is so important. If you care, why say you don't care? "I don't care" really ought to mean "I don't care."

[tracilicious]

But what if I only want you to feel like you have a choice when actually the option that I don't want you to choose is very unpleasant?

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by tracilicious

But what if I only want you to feel like you have a choice when actually the option that I don't want you to choose is very unpleasant?

Do you seriously think we can't see through that? Give us some bleedin' credit here. "Do the dishes please." See how easy that is? (can you tell CP and I have had this conversation?)

[Gn2Dlnd]

"Before you leave, would you mind putting away the things on the bathroom counter and wiping off the shaving cream?" seems to work just fine around here.

"I will do the dishes when I get home from the theatre," also seems to work.

I need to do the dishes.

[Not Afraid]

L- You live to have fun.
I- You have a fine ***
S- Easy to fall in love with.
A - You like to drink.