Dear Carolyn: My husband and I have a whole host of problems, but the one that has taken over recently is my sneezing. I have allergies and I usually sneeze a few times in the morning before my medicine kicks in. It makes my husband so angry that he curses and yells at me to stop, every morning. He’ll go on with these speeches about how annoying it is and how if I would stop, then he wouldn’t be so angry.
I’ve already talked with a doctor, I’m not a good candidate for shots and he thinks I should just stay on my over-the-counter medicine.
I really don’t know what to do. It’s gotten to the point that I’m yelling back, and saying that if it’s really so awful, he doesn’t have to live with me.
I know the anger about my sneezing is probably just a stand-in for something else, but I’m about at the end of what I can handle. It happens with other involuntary things, too: hiccups, yawns. Or voluntary things that also affect him: I sat on his side of the couch, etc.
He won’t go to therapy, I’ve asked so many times. What’s next? Is there something I’m not considering?
— Sneezing
Sneezing: Divorce?
I don’t mean to sound glib — it’s just that you (both) sound so miserable.
He, abusively so.
If it were just the sneezing, then I’d say to change the timing of your allergy pill so any gap falls when you’re at work, for example, or can more easily be away from home. But you refer to “a whole host of problems,” and I don’t believe anyone owes their spouse or the institution of marriage a lifelong sacrifice of one’s dignity and peace of mind — which is how I’d view waking up daily to someone cursing me out. For any reason.
Reader response:
I suffer from misophonia. Even though I am 100 percent sure I am totally normal, and can’t imagine how anyone doesn’t fly into a rage at the sound of swallowing, I understand that swallowing is necessary to live and sneezing is involuntary. Sometimes I snap, but that NEVER means berating somebody for a noise they can’t control, especially not routinely. There is no excuse for that.
— Anonymous
Write to Carolyn Hax at [email protected]. Get her column delivered to your inbox each morning at wapo.st/haxpost.
