Bad habits - Tolerance
I had a boyfriend in college whose roommate would clean his ears with Q-tips and then leave them scattered around the bathroom and closets instead of throwing them away. At one point, my boyfriend found one in his shoe.
“That’s it,” he declared. “No more Qtips!”
The Qtip dilemma stopped for about a week, but then started up again with a new fierceness. I stayed out of the bathroom and closets when I visited, so for the most part, I wasn’t affected. I did not want to rock the boat, so I didn’t say anything.
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As gross as this habit was, it didn’t beat that of my roommate’s boyfriend, who liked to chew tobacco and spit the juice into empty coke cans lining our shelves and desks. (I’m from Texas remember—they like their chewin’ tobaccah, guns, and BBQ, and not in that order). I guess it served us right that we’d leave cans lying around like that, but this was before recycling was available everywhere, and I just didn’t feel right trashing aluminum. So, they’d pile up until I found someone with a car willing to take me to the grocery store to get Fruity Pebbles and dump the recycling. Sometimes on drunk nights we’d forget which cans he spit in. You can guess what happened. Ain’t pretty.
This got me thinking about bad habits, and how they kind of creep into our lives without us realizing. Then these habits just become part of “who we are”. So, when we date other people with other bad habits, where do we draw the line between what is acceptable/ what we must tolerate vs. what we should confront?
I’ve lived with roommates and by myself. Mostly by myself, for long periods of time. I don’t like it when dishes are left in the sink, or when there’s mold in the shower under the shampoo bottles (read my last post for background on my current issues with mold), so I will grab a sponge at 11:00 at night if I have to. I don’t like it when the door is left unlocked, and I check it about 10 times before I leave or go to bed. I have a ritual with cleaning my teeth that takes about 20 minutes (much like the OCD woman in “Obsessed”, who can’t stop brushing her teeth).
These are just a few of my “habits”…even though I have a blog I’m a pretty private person, so I’ll refrain from too much detail…
Since I’ve lived by myself a lot, I like my things the way they are. I like my rituals. And I’m not very forgiving of having to change and adjust for someone else. At least I thought I wasn’t, so I was scared of someone else coming into the picture. I didn’t know if I could handle dealing with a significant other’s habits, or having to break some of my own.
Now that I’m sharing my life, my space with my significant other, it’s different. Of course we’ve had to make adjustments. Of course we’ve made compromises (I left the dishes piled in the sink last night FYI). But I’m more capable of letting things go. I’m more flexible than I thought I could be, and he’s more understanding of my annoying little habits that I won’t disclose here. There are too many great things about him and the relationship to let the annoying habits get in the way.
Bad habits will always be present in all of us. The less importance we place on keeping everything around us as we like it, and the more willing we are to be flexible and let things go, the happier we’ll be.
So that’s why I’m glad I found out…I am able to change, to accept, and to tolerate. It’s not as hard as I thought it might be.
Whether you’re single or coupled, don’t let annoying habits dictate whether or not you want to pursue a relationship. We’re all capable of change. And we’re more forgiving than we think.