Husband reaches his limit with 4-legged roommates

DEAR MARIANN: My spouse had sev­eral pets when we mar­ried and I knew what I was get­ting into since she is an avid ani­mal lover. I am now find­ing that I can’t tol­er­ate so many of them since there is resid­ual fur on fur­ni­ture and cloth­ing. The cats get into cab­i­nets and tear open food pack­ages, along with the lit­ter box odor. Friends say they don’t want to visit or ride in our cars because of the smell and fur. Your thoughts, please.

MARIANN’S RESPONSE: So cor­rect me if I am wrong. You knew what “you were get­ting into” but you con­tin­ued into the mar­riage any­way? Were you expect­ing her to lose the ani­mals and focus only on you after the wed­ding? Good luck with that mode of think­ing, espe­cially when first-time mar­riages hover at a 50-percent fail­ure rate, and even higher for a second-go-round the mar­riage track. Since I am an ani­mal lover myself, sorry, but you won’t get much sym­pa­thy here. Unless she has become an ani­mal hoarder, you prob­a­bly ignored an obvi­ous area of incom­pat­i­bil­ity before marriage.

For any­one con­tem­plat­ing mar­riage, please don’t “tie the knot” with the expec­ta­tion of chang­ing the other per­son after the wed­ding bliss has cooled. My the­ory is: “If you don’t like some­thing about your to-be-mate, STOP NOW before you reach the altar.” What you “see” prior to mar­riage is prob­a­bly what you are going to get after the hon­ey­moon, and poten­tially, for­ever. Some­one who expects a dif­fer­ent behav­ior from the other per­son when the sit­u­a­tion already existed lacks good com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills when need­ing to con­front issues before mar­riage or in other rela­tion­ships. This includes hav­ing passive/aggressive ten­den­cies by want­ing to exces­sively con­trol their envi­ron­ment with­out verbalization.

Prior to pro­gress­ing toward mat­ri­mony, it should be deter­mined if “the issue” with your betrothed is a deal-breaker. A few of these “prob­lem areas” include an alarm­ing habit, such as drink­ing too much, or strained rela­tion­ships with can­tan­ker­ous future in-laws, hel­lion stepchil­dren, or in this case, pets. Talk­ing about “the pet sit­u­a­tion” prior to your mar­riage would have been wise. Have you com­mu­ni­cated your recent feel­ings to her or just to me? Mar­riage is a con­tin­ued series of com­pro­mises that neces­si­tates open and ongo­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Have you tried to find mutual agree­ment with this sit­u­a­tion, such as “pets only” in cer­tain areas of the house? Also, this is a good exam­ple of why liv­ing together first, before mak­ing a “trip down the aisle,” might have been wise.

Your com­men­tary about the cats get­ting into your cup­boards and on coun­ter­tops makes me won­der if you are help­ing to curb this sit­u­a­tion, or just com­plain­ing and doing noth­ing, which is passive/aggressive behav­ior. How about installing child-guards on the cup­board doors so the cats can’t open them and find food? Are you leav­ing items on the coun­ter­tops that are entic­ing? If so, put every­thing away (in one of those child-locked cup­boards) so there is no temp­ta­tion. Do you help with any of the house­work such as vac­u­um­ing to con­tain the fur? And finally, when you men­tion friends not want­ing to ride in “our cars due to the fur,” my guess is that her cats don’t go for rides, so is there a dog in the pet mix? Is it also hers or is this one yours? If the canine is rid­ing in your car too, pos­si­bly hav­ing a “dog-free car,” ver­sus allow­ing the dog in both cars would be help­ful. My guess is that your tol­er­ance for the dog’s fur is much higher than what it is for her cats. Hope­fully my sug­ges­tions will be help­ful in resolv­ing your “ani­mal house” dilemma.

Mar­i­ann Main is a Licensed Coun­selor and a Delaware native. Her col­umn appears weekly on Sat­ur­days. To sub­mit a ques­tion and have Mar­i­ann answer it anony­mously, visit delgazette.com/life-questions-with-local-answers or send mail to the Delaware Gazette office, 40 N. San­dusky St., suite 203, Delaware, OH 43015.

Posted by Mariann Main on Sep 28 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.