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It's the niggling little things in a relationship that can drive you to despair, or even divorce. Here, best-selling novelist Wendy Holden identifies the syndrome which can steer a marriage onto the rocks: MAD, or Minor Annoyance Disorder
"It got to the point where I refused to leave the house," recalls Marie. "I dreaded going on holiday - or even away for the weekend - in case it happened again. But it always did. We’d get to the airport my husband would lift my suitcase out of the car, groan, and ask me why on earth it was so heavy. Why did I have to pack so many clothes? It got so I couldn't stand it. Or him, frankly."
Marie's marriage is MAD. It suffers from Minor Annoyance Disorder; a syndrome where the husband repeatedly infuriates the wife by means of small but deeply irritating offences. Chances are, you've come across it yourself.
Because the awful thing about MAD is that it can assume an apparently infinite number of forms. The husbands who mentally switch off whenever their wives say anything. Who leave shaving brush bristles in the basin after shaving. Who fail to unload the dishwasher (while leaving piles of unwashed plates on the top of it). Who neglect to refill the car with petrol after using it. Who are oblivious to dates, from anniversaries and birthdays to the sell-by ones on yogurt or milk. Who leave trails of unwashed coffee mugs throughout the house. Who have no idea where the washing machine is, still less what it does. Recognise anyone?
I realised what a widespread problem MAD is during the research for my latest novel The School For Husbands. I discovered that while the big things - having an affair, for example - can often (but not always) cause a marriage to implode, it's the drip drip effect of the constant small irritants that can cause just as much - if not more - irreversible damage.
The School of the title is an institution where you can send an unsatisfactory spouse on an intensive residential course from which they emerge as the perfect husband. The philosophy of the School's principal, the messianic Dr Martha Krankenhaus, is that the stuff that breaks marriages is subtle and small and only noticed by the wife (which of course is what makes it SO irritating). MAD, in other words.
It was a bit of an inspired guess on my part. I had imagined my personal struggles: a husband eternally out of earshot even in a small three-bedroomed house; water all over the bathroom floor after he's taken a shower, to be my own unique difficulties. But what I discovered was that every relationship on the planet suffers from Minor Annoyance Disorder to some extent.
"His idea of accessorising was to walk around with a plastic bag," stormed one woman I spoke to. "I do my best. I've bought him Mulberry briefcases, expensive leather document bags, you name it, but he prefers the one with the hole in from Tesco."
"I snatched the newspaper crossword out of his hands in the end," admitted a wife whose husband spends hours of every day puzzling over cryptic clues. "Then I marched up to the pub he always goes to and shoved it in the piano lid."
Devil in the detail
That the devil is in the domestic detail is illustrated by celebrities as much as civilians. TV glamourpuss Tess Daly recently criticised dishy husband Vernon Kay for the deeply undishy, unglamorous crimes of putting wet towels on the bed, never replacing the kitchen bin bag, and leaving a dishwasher containing sharp knives open in the vicinity of their toddler daughter. Hugh Grant's love of watching football in bed famously drove Liz Hurley potty, while footballer Sol Campbell's obsession with the TV weather channel grated on (now former) girlfriend Kelly Hoppen. And Prince Philip's fondness for driving up to nice houses for an impromptu nose about reportedly sends Her Majesty diving down in the back seat with embarrassment. And that's without even mentioning all the other things he does which are so excrutiatingly embarrassing.
Women all over the country agree it's their partners' small crimes that annoy them most. My publishers, Headline, commissioned a nationwide survey - What Most Irritates Women About Their Partners - to tie in with publication of The School For Husbands. Out of a nationwide sample of women, well over half (70 per cent in Scotland!) said husbands not listening was what annoyed them most, followed by leaving the loo seat up, and not doing any housework. Sex - widely imagined to be a marital flashpoint - figured only at the very bottom of the list; husbands' performance in the bedroom bothering a mere six per cent of wives.
But why do the petty felonies provoke such strong reactions? At the most obvious, basic level, says YOU relationships counsellor Zelda West-Meads, women believe it shows a lack of respect for them and their feelings. If men cared, they wouldn’t do it - or they would, if you see what I mean. But sometimes, blowing your top over a wet towel can disguise more deeply-felt worries. Huge, scary problems - shortage of money, say, or concerns about the children, can be impossible to face up to; hair clogging up the bathplug, on the other hand, offers a chance to let off steam.
"Quite often there are major issues in a family which, unconfronted, simmer under the surface," Zelda says. "In that situation, something small can provoke an over-reaction. I once counselled a couple who argued endlessly over the garden. But what they were really rowing about was the fact that whenever the children from the husband's first marriage came to visit, the wife felt left out."
High divorce rates
We live in an age when divorce rates are unprecedentedly high - and rising. And because we also live in an age of sensation we imagine these headline-grabbing statistics have headline-grabbing causes. Adultery. Addiction. Friends Reunited. But could it be that more relationships actually bite the dust over something far less obviously dramatic; the man’s failure to - well - dust? "Who does and doesn’t do what around the house is very high up on the list of what causes arguments in relationships," reports Zelda West-Meads.
The legal experts agree. "It doesn't have to be something as drastic as an affair which breaks a marriage," says leading divorce barrister Charles Hale. "All too often spouses will cite petty misdemeanours as grounds for divorce. Socks in the bed, toe nails in the bath and god forbid, forgetting birthdays, have all found their way into petitions for divorce."
But you don't need a leading lawyer to tell you this. Every woman has experienced MAD. But it’s not just a British thing, nor is it necessarily confined to husbands, either. Early last year, a Kentucky University study, Social Allergies in Romantic Relationships, gave the US take on MAD. It charted the end of over a hundred partnerships. And guess what? The small stuff, all over again. The study found that often a shrill laugh is enough to finish things, while other crimes against cohabitational felicity included not hanging up towels, taking too long in the shops and (yuk) using a fork as a backscratcher. Then there's that woman in Texas who sued her husband for divorce, citing ESPN, the all-night cable sports channel, as the co-respondent. She won the case.
But given that it's more often the women who sue for divorce than men, it would seem that husbands throughout the nation - if not the world - are on notice. Chaps, surely it's worth trying to follow a conversation or leave the lavatory in the state in which you found it if failure to do so upsets the ladies to such an extent? The consequences, let's face it, can be expensive. Divorce courts are awarding increasing sums to dissatisfied wives, most obviously at the wealthy end of the marriage market. Shwan al-Mulla, a London-based Iraqi businessmen, is reportedly facing a claim for £500 million from Suzan, his wife of twenty years. With that sort of bill looming, it's definitely worth picking your socks up off the floor.
A real life School For Husbands would clearly be warmly welcomed. It has yet to open its doors, but in the meantime there is plenty of excellent advice for wives driven mad by MAD."I get couples to make a wish list, write down the three things they wish their partner would do," says Zelda West-Meads. "Things like 'take me out to dinner once a week', or 'put the cap back on the toothpaste'. They each try and do one thing from the list every week. It's about breaking the pattern." Breaking the pattern, not breaking the marriage. You see, it doesn’t need to be a MAD world. web pagePosts: 3188 | Registered: Feb 2007
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I just hate my wife and kids, I think I am going to plan to kill them all with some kind of arsenic.
Posts: 1167 | From: Homelandless | Registered: May 2006
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Can't live with them, can't live without them...I think the small constant annoyances work both ways!!! Luckily, woman can go to their girlfriends for a drink and b....ch to their heart's content but who can a man talk to? I kinda feel for the poor guys!
Posts: 206 | Registered: Mar 2007
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