We all have the little things that annoy us about each other, but 10 years is plenty of time to air that stuff out.

Nobody wants to be blindsided. If something is going to go wrong, we would like a little bit of warning. This doesn’t always happen, though, and it isn’t always possible. But in the little fights we have with our significant others, we can do our best to be fully communicative whenever we can. We would do well to say the things that are on our minds, especially in a committed long-term relationship. If you let things bubble under the surface for too long, they’re going to fester and get worse. But if you’re in the practice of speaking up, then things can get dealt with immediately.

In any long-term relationship, there are going to be little habits and tics that the other person has that annoy you. Nobody is perfect, and we all have different tastes and bandwidths for quirks. Something that makes someone else happy might get under another person’s skin. It’s about the way you handle these things that can make or break a relationship. You don’t want to ambush your annoyance on someone else, especially if it’s a habit that’s baked into who they are. The husband in this story was privately, quietly annoyed with his wife for some time, and finally reached a breaking point.