What Do To About Wifely Nagging For Reasonable Requests

A reader question...

"I stumbled across your blog a few months ago, and I've really appreciated your advice. I'm sure you get plenty of blog post ideas, but I thought of a question that I don't think I've seen you cover before. How do you handle occasional nagging? Even more tricky, how do you handle a reasonable request that's delivered in a nagging way.

My wife doesn't nag very much; it's one of the things I love about her. But occasionally she will, and I usually get blindsided by it. It's easier to respond to a ridiculous request by making a joke of it (and not complying). The hard ones are when the request is probably something I should be doing ( rinsing off dinner plates, carrying stuff upstairs, etc), but it's given in a very naggy way, as if I'm a child.

I suppose the first thing to do is make sure I am pulling my weight around the house, especially with the man's chores. But we all slip up now and then. Any advice on how to respond, possibly comply with the request, and still show some Alpha traits?"

Ah this is a tricky one. She's "right" in that they are reasonable requests, but "wrong" with the tone and demeaning attitude. So even if you comply you lose, and you lose if you don't do it. She loses as well because she has to nag you to get it done, or if she doesn't it doesn't happen.

So you have to reframe the whole situation.

Firstly I'd just draw her attention to the fact that (1) you understand and agree something needs to be done, and (2) that nagging happened and now you're both getting trapped in the dynamic of nagging that is lose-lose.

So then you ask her to repeat the request to you pleasantly. One option for this is starting with a 10 second kiss, or hugging etc. This usually calms you both down and takes the nag / venom out of the reasonable request. If she asks nice you go do it. If she refuses to ask pleasantly, you don't complete the task, or get to it when you have time. Nagging is rude and why would you provide good service to rude people.

The other option for her asking you to complete reasonable requests is to have her cup her breasts and to lift them up and lightly smoosh them together as she asks her request. Studies have shown that for fully covered females this is 57% more effective than female on male nagging for task completion, and tasks are completed on average 37 days earlier. For for revealing tops this increases to 87% more effective and averages 93 days earlier. Unfortunately the data for topless females is incomplete as the research was halted to start a multitude of landscaping and remodeling projects.

Further reading would be Some Common Fitness Tests and Oh Nice Now My Wife Is Gaming Me Back.