OK - I have to vent about a pet peeve re. my wife. Two related things - First, she is borderline OCD about snow removal. Let me caveat that we live in a rural area, and I grew up in a rural area. This is NOT in town. When I was a kid, if it snowed less than an inch or two, you pretty much just left it. It would usually melt in a few days. Now that we live in NJ, our street is admittedly less rural than where I grew up, but it's still not a "clear your sidewalk" cul-de-sac. Except for us....My wife has basically begun passive-aggressively going out to clear a quarter of an inch of snow off of our sidewalk and driveway because I told her I didn't feel like that amount of snow needed to be done. She said she's worried a kid or a delivery man will slip. We're not talking about a few inches...we're talking about a dusting. Anything white on the surface. Despite me saying I think it's totally fine, she basically goes and does it anyway, and I feel like the a-hole for not helping her clear an insignificant amount of snow.
She does the same thing with the dishes. Some nights, I get home, and I'm tired. It's been a long day, but I know I need to help out, so I'll say, "Just leave the dishes, I'll do them in a few hours once the kids go to bed. I just want to sit and decompress for a few." A while later, she starts doing them...When I ask her why, she says, "I got tired of looking at them" or something along those lines. Always making "not a big deal" out of it, just like with the snow clearing, but also clearly not just leaving it.
End result - I now feel guilty for a task that in one case, I didn't feel needed to be done at all, and in the case of the other, it's not even about IF I help with dishes, it's making sure I do it on her schedule. It's so frustrating. There's an element of control in it that just really irks me.
Counter-points welcome.