There isn’t a married man alive who doesn’t claim to be nagged by his wife. Whether or not she is a pro at the fine art of nagging or not; men seem to inherently think that once they get married they will eventually be privy to nagging. And they will complain about it loudly to anyone they think might listen. With all this nagging going on it can easily make one wonder whether or not it is really happening the way men think. Perhaps and probably men have just begun to feel about wives and nagging like peanut butter feels about jelly! Definitely good separate-but more common together.
This isn’t exactly fair. First off nagging is defined by the dictionary as ‘marked by, causing or experiencing physical pain’.I would go out on a limb here to say that few women nag to the point of pain and that most men can tune a woman out as easily as they leave the toilet seat up. This tuning out may be the first indicator to what nagging is really about. Women and wives in particular are forced to repeat things over and over again because men are often evasive, silent and happily able to ignore conversation unless it is interesting to them. You can sit in a room with your husband, make plans for a great family weekend and although they will nod in agreement come Friday they will behave as if they never heard of the plans before. But if you are talking about NASCAR, a baseball game or the latest edition of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition their ears perk up like puppies at dinnertime.
Secondly, to a man nagging is saying anything more then once. Unfortunately there are few things that a man can be told once that they actually remember. This of course excludes anything that strokes their male ego. As a wife is forced to repeat herself she is suddenly bringing on what men think is a nag fest. I think the term and the insinuation has much more to do with male comradery than real habits of their female counterparts.
It is important to consider that men are curious creatures. More often than not if they are asked or told to do something they will lose all urge to do it. They could be on their way outside clearly to cut grass and as soon as wifey- poo suggests they cut the back lawn as well; they will park their butts back on the couch. Again, when the dear wife wants to know if honey isn’t feeling well or if everything is okay they (meaning husbands) begin again to accuse her wrongfully of nagging. Some may even go so far as to accuse their wife of trying to plan their day or of telling them what to do like they are a child. Hmmm! Very curious behavior. The bottom line is (and all wives know this) that he really wanted to play arm chair quarterback munching on chips with a cold beer in hand. Now he has a passive aggressive approach to feeling righteous about being lazy and can pretend to be a victim of nagging as well.
Another thing to consider is that wives are wired to think of 50 things at once. With all this thinking going on and to-do lists piling up in their head they have to speak them out loud to everyone who will listen in order to keep them all straight and to get anything in the home or otherwise accomplished. Okay, admittedly it may be a bit bossy, but calling it nagging is just a fallacy. Nagging in and of itself is an organizational tool that gets the laundry done, the shopping finished, the dishes washed, the kids bathed, dinner cooked, closets organized, and the house cleaned. Nagging is also responsible for making room for all that’ sex that men think they are entitled to for doing absolutely little to help. It is true that nagging is often a form of resentment as well. It is frustrating that a wife can take care of the home, children and hold down a job with constant distraction while a man can only do one of those things at a time. So, yes some women resort to a bit of nagging to invoke a form of silent punishment. Usually, it works. When a husband has had enough or heard the same request so many times they will normally cave in to the pressure in order to escape the dreaded and so called harassment of their nagging wife. Essentially it is win-win for the wife!
Staying real for a minute, I seem to think that although wives are accused of nagging more – men actually do it more. Men seem to think that because they are men their constant and silent criticism of what isn’t working does not count as nagging. But trust me, it does. This includes the silent kind of disproval they do when they can’t find socks. It seems to me that if most men had to get done in a day what their wives do they would be spilling over with things to nag about. It has just become common place in society to label the wife with the nagging. Realistically, this accusation simply serves’ husbands to pout. Anything they don’t want to do or hear can be ignored because they plead their nagging victim status. This pouting is quite worse than nagging because not only is it dishonest it is 100% immature and counter productive.
So…to all the ‘nagging’ wives in this world I say keep on keeping on. Things get done mostly because of us and we should never have to feel bad about speaking our minds. The only way to be completely nag proof would be to say nothing at all unless it was something our husbands actually wanted to hear. That is just unrealistic and not much fun. Men need to suck it up a bit and realize that if they paid attention the first time, spent time pulling their weight and pampered their wives just a bit more they could live a nag-free life. This would be optimal – however it would undoubtedly leave them with very little to talk or complain to the guys about it.
