Why Relationships Matter

Take our Can You Spot Red Flags In A Relationship?

Find a therapist to strengthen relationships

In one survey, 33% of people listed their partner as "the most annoying person they know."

Annoyance with a partner is seen as an inevitable and insignificant part of living together.

Annoyance can hijack our attention and give rise to negative emotions.

We often decide we don’t like someone—a colleague, an acquaintance, an actor or influencer—simply because they "annoy" or "irritate" us. The habit someone has of flicking their hair, or sniffing or swallowing or the way they laugh, is enough for us to limit our exposure to them. As long as our irritation can be contained while contact is necessary and not leach into rudeness, no further reflection seems warranted. Our idiosyncratic responses to others guide our personal preferences and aversions to other people, just as do the subjective aesthetics of whom we find attractive—or not.

Annoyance with people close to us—people in our family with whom we live and sleep and eat and play—is very different. This isn’t annoyance we tend to disguise. Familiarity switches off our social filter, so we don’t mind showing our displeasure. We may also go on the attack as we proclaim, "You’re so annoying!" Such irritation hijacks our attention, making it impossible to ignore. One common pinch point is in adolescence, when the teen finds so much of what a parent does highly annoying. Just being in the same room with a parent, hearing them mutter to themselves as they cook or clean, rub their feet together as they watch TV, gasp or laugh at a story, can send a teen into a paroxysm of annoyance. Such irritation feels like profound criticism of who the parent is, though what the criticism........

© Psychology Today