Joe Palca - Annoying

The list goes on. Felmlee says that someone who is seen as humorous at the start of a relationship can later be considered “flaky” or “immature.” One woman reported that she was attracted by her boyfriend’s sense of humor, but then she complained that he “doesn’t always take other people’s feelings seriously (jokes around too much).”

Caring is another positive quality with a downside. Felmlee reports that one woman was attracted to a man who was “very attentive” and persistent, but she disliked that he “tries to be controlling.” Another woman described a former partner as “caring,” “sensitive,” and someone who listened to her. Yet she did not like the fact that he also got jealous very easily, and “he hated it when [she] wanted to spend time with other friends.” {36} 36 1. D. Felmlee, “From Appealing to Appalling: Disenchantment with a Romantic Partner,” Sociological Perspectives 44(3) (2001): 263–280.

For nearly every positive quality that you can think of, there’s a flip side that can become annoying over time:

• People who are nice and agreeable can later be seen as passive and prone to letting people walk all over them.

• Someone who is strong willed and knows where he is going can later appear stubborn and unreasonable.

• The outgoing, garrulous life of the party can become the nonstop performer who won’t shut up.

• The solicitous, caring suitor becomes the clingy, needy partner.

• An exciting risk taker turns into an irresponsible parent.

• The physically attractive love interest becomes the high-maintenance spouse.

• Laid-back turns into lazy.

• A successful person becomes a workaholic.

In a way, the concept of fatal attraction bears a resemblance to hedonic reversal but backward. With relationships, we start off finding a quality of our mates attractive, and over time it becomes annoying. With hedonic reversal, something that is intrinsically unpleasant—like eating hot chili peppers—becomes enjoyable with repeated exposure. This is not only an American phenomenon. Felmlee has tested people all over the world, and the same pattern seems to hold.

The other thing she consistently finds is that the more strongly someone exhibits a particular trait, the more likely that trait is to become annoying. Again, the dose matters. So, for example, a spouse is more likely to become annoyed with a partner who is exceptionally funny and always telling jokes than with one who makes a witty remark on occasion.

What’s going on here? Why do strengths become weaknesses and endearing qualities, irritants? “I call it disillusionment,” says Felmlee. She believes the answer may be related to something called social exchange theory. “Extreme traits have rewards,” she says, “but they also have costs associated with them, especially when you are in a relationship.”

Take independence. “Independence can be valued in a partner, one who can stand on his own two feet,” says Felmlee. “But if you’re too independent, that means you don’t need your wife. And that can have costs in a relationship.”

Felmlee has thought a lot about how couples might get around some of these points. Self-awareness helps. She recalls one man who complained that his wife was stubborn. “On the other hand, what he really liked about her and loved from the beginning was her strength of character. And he said he was entirely committed to her and planned to be with her for the rest of his life.” This man, at least, seemed to be aware that positive qualities have an inherent downside. “And he seemed aware of his own limitations. He said, ‘I’m stubborn, too, and she has to put up with that.’

“It’s not like you get this perfect person, and there are no downsides to his or her qualities,” says Felmlee. “It just doesn’t happen.”

The other thing that can create annoyance in relationships is repetition. Even if your partner only occasionally leaves a clump of hair in the drain or talks while he’s eating, spending a lifetime with someone creates ample opportunities for repeated exposure. “The same thing keeps happening over and over and over again in a marriage,” says Elaine Hatfield, a psychologist at the University of Hawaii and a fiction writer to boot, “because we all have our goofy little quirks.” Anything can become annoying with time, but Hatfield says that these annoyances get amplified according to the principles of something called equity theory.

The idea is that individuals and groups are encouraged to behave fairly with one another, and that people are most comfortable when they feel they are being treated equitably. Equity theory says that if you feel you are in an inequitable relationship, you will try to change that by restoring psychological or actual equity or by leaving the relationship. If the equity balance tilts toward you, and you’re getting a good deal in a relationship, then you might be willing to ignore your partner’s annoying habits and do less dishing out of things that get his goat. “But if you think, ‘That guy, he takes advantage of me at every turn, I’m stuck here with the eight children, I cannot leave, and he’s out having a great time,’ it would just grate on you more,” says Hatfield.

Hatfield’s relationship with her own husband validates this theory. She says that nothing her husband does annoys her. Really. She feels that their relationship is in excellent balance, and she is truly grateful that a person as wonderful as he is loves her. It’s almost as if Hatfield can’t imagine being annoyed with her husband. Her lack of irritation with him is not because Hatfield is an easygoing person who never gets annoyed with anyone. “I get so mad at some people in my life, I would happily have them die,” she says with a tone of slightly bemused exaggeration.

There could be more than mere repetition at stake here, says Michael Cunningham, the scientist who came up with that list of social allergens.

First, when a relationship starts and partners are in that dreamy love state, the other person is seen through rose-tinted glasses. It’s not that you’re unaware of your partner’s annoying habit of cracking his knuckles; it’s just that it doesn’t seem like a big deal. Later on, when what Cunningham calls deromanticization has taken place, the willingness to overlook these uncouth behaviors evaporates. And things can only get worse. “You might have said something to your partner, and he promised to make a change,” says Cunningham. “But then the change didn’t happen, which conveys a certain attitude of disrespect or indifference.”

The second reason these social allergens become more annoying with time is that they occur more frequently after the initial romantic blast. Cunningham says that psychologist Rowland S. Miller has a good explanation why:

Once a courtship is over and a partner has been won, people usually relax their crafting of their self-presentations and try less hard to make consistently favorable impressions on those from whom acceptance is assured…. When we can rely on others’ approbation and approval, we stop trying so hard to get them to like us. Thus, it is that a suitor who never appeared for breakfast without his beard well-trimmed and his cologne apparent becomes a spouse who shows up in his underwear, unwashed and unshaven, and then steals the last doughnut. {37} 37 2. R. S. Miller, “We Always Hurt the Ones We Love: Aversive Interactions in Close Relationships,” in R. M. Kowalski, ed., Aversive Interpersonal Behaviors (New York: Plenum Press, 1997), 11–29, esp. p. 19.

Men and women differ on which social allergens they’re most likely to exhibit and which ones are the most likely to bug them. Men tend to see women as inconsiderate, intrusive, and increasingly domineering and controlling as a relationship progresses. Perhaps not surprisingly, women see men as more likely to exhibit uncouth behaviors. Women were more annoyed than men were with violations of societal expectations, such as smoking in no-smoking areas or ignoring parking tickets.