Addressing New Year’s Peeves Can Pay Off Later : Couples who eliminate those small irritations can make a big difference in their day-to-day lives.

When you’re making your list of New Year’s resolutions during half-times today, think small--especially if your goal is scoring more touchdowns with your mate in 1992.

If you can muster up the courage to ask, chances are you’ll discover that the ways in which your partner would most like you to change your behavior in the coming year are surprisingly simple, perhaps even petty.

Yet, eliminating the small irritations in your day-to-day life together can make a big difference in the quality of your relationship. Consider how much more patient and loving you could be if your mate made 1992 the year to stop tormenting you with such maddening habits as:

* Monopolizing the TV remote control and channel-hopping.

* Squeezing the toothpaste tube in the middle.

* Leaving the toilet seat up (or down, depending on sex).

* Pulling the covers off you at night.

* Forgetting to give you phone messages.

* Neglecting to balance the checkbook.

* Coming home late without the courtesy of a phone call.

* Spraying beauty products when you are in target range.

* Criticizing the way you drive.

* Leaving a trail of personal items around the house.

This is just a sampling of the pet peeves Orange County family therapists came up with when asked what little things are irritating enough to cause big blowups in their clients’--or their own--marriages.

Because the new year offers an opportunity to start with a clean slate, this is a good day for you and your spouse to make your own list of the ways in which you drive each other crazy. And, of course, to make firm resolutions to be more considerate of each other in 1992.

This exercise may be far more important to your marriage than you realize. Bobbi Nesheim, a psychotherapist who practices in San Clemente and Fullerton, observes: “The big issues hurt so much that we’re willing to do something about them. But the little annoyances don’t grab our attention--or, if they do, we think we’re just being petty. Yet they can break up relationships if they’re not addressed.”

Kristine Jablonski, a psychiatric nurse and family therapist in Placentia, agrees: “The little things can mount up so that, after a number of years, they become huge, to the point where it feels like they’re insurmountable and you finally say, ‘I don’t care anymore. I’m out of here.’ ”

Although Nesheim maintains that pet peeves are typically surface-level issues related to stubborn habits, some therapists say that they could be a sign of deeper problems.

E. Wayne Hart, a marriage and family counselor in Cypress, says couples learn to accept or ignore most of the insignificant behavior they dislike. “When things become pet peeves, they have taken on a symbolic significance for the objecting spouse,” he says.

For example, he notes, the failure of one partner to stop behavior that disturbs the other may leave the irritated spouse feeling powerless and unloved.

“On the surface,” Hart adds, “mates report continuing to do the irritating things for harmless reasons like not seeing the importance of doing it differently or forgetting. But I think mates keep repeating the behaviors for symbolic reasons as well--to win an imagined or real power struggle or to act out hostility.”

Pet peeves can be a handy distraction for couples who are unable to confront deeper conflicts.

Hart explains: “By arguing over the small things, they are avoiding the bigger, symbolic issues. The pet peeve issue is concrete and lends itself to a right vs. wrong position. It is narrow and impersonal and, therefore, safe.

“The symbolic issues are more abstract and personal; people have trouble recognizing them and dealing with the many thoughts and feelings they arouse.”

Todd Creager, a Huntington Beach marriage, family and child counselor, has had many couples come into marital counseling with petty complaints, accusing each other of “making a mountain out of a molehill.”

But, he says, the small irritations that cause a disproportionate share of anger and frustration often point the way to such underlying problems as an inability to negotiate and compromise or a lack of sensitivity and empathy.

Lee Hachey and Jeanne Nelson, Costa Mesa therapists who have been married for 13 years, say that the more serious pet peeves may grow out of painful childhood experiences.

“When we overreact to something, there’s a 99% chance that it’s linked to something in our past that was traumatic,” Hachey says.

Hachey and Nelson have looked to their childhoods to explain their running battle over the TV remote control.

“I’ll grab the remote right out of his hand. I’ve just got to have it,” Nelson admits.

Hachey gets furious when his wife starts flipping through the channels while he’s trying to watch a program. But, they say, it has helped to realize that what’s really going on is a battle over who gets control.

“I came from a highly competitive family--you got what you wanted by grabbing it,” Nelson says.

But when she grabs the remote control away from Hachey, she triggers feelings of powerlessness that he felt growing up as the youngest child in a large family. The result is a fight that could easily escalate way beyond the surface conflict if the couple didn’t recognize why they were so upset.

Pet peeves also grow out of basic differences in living habits that are difficult to change because they are deeply ingrained, Hachey notes. “If the wife is a perfectionist and her husband is sloppy, it creates a tremendous amount of conflict,” he says.

Often, the conflict results from the mistaken assumption that there are ulterior motives behind mindless habits, says Kenneth Rhea, a Huntington Beach marriage, family and child counselor.

“Men and women tend to associate lack of attention to their requests as a lack of consideration to them personally,” he says. “Most of the time, it isn’t personal.”

He admits it took him awhile to realize that his wife’s habit of being late wasn’t her way of expressing anger toward him. She once told him, “You knew I was this way when you married me. It has nothing to do with you; it’s the way I am.”

He’s learned to accept that instead of creating problems by saying to himself, “If she loved me enough, she would behave differently.”

Therapists suggest that couples work at keeping their pet peeves in perspective--and eliminating as many as possible--by talking about them calmly, lovingly and regularly.

Sally Feldman, a Fountain Valley psychotherapist, stresses that it’s important to resist making accusations and, instead, to express feelings. For example, say: “When you read the newspaper at the breakfast table, I feel scared that we’re growing apart” or “I feel ignored and unimportant when you don’t give me my phone messages.”

This approach has worked for Jeanne Nelson, who gets irritated because her husband is reluctant to switch lanes when he’s driving behind a vehicle that is either going too slow or emitting noxious fumes.

“I learned that if I talk more about myself instead of telling him what to do, he’s much more empathetic. If I say, ‘Those bus fumes are really bothering me,’ he’ll switch lanes. But if I say, ‘For God’s sake, are we going to sit here behind this truck forever?’ he’ll say, ‘Would you like to drive?’ ”

Although some habits are so deeply ingrained that no amount of gentle prodding will bring about change, couples can keep pet peeves from becoming major issues if they’re willing to work at it, therapists say.

Feldman recommends that couples make a list of 20 specific tasks each spouse could do to make his or her partner feel loved and appreciated and agree to do at least one thing on the list every day. It’s easier to overlook the more petty annoyances when you can see that your partner is making an effort to please you, she notes.

The effort is important, says Rhea, because “men or women who compensate for the lack of consideration of their partner without complaint are actually hurting themselves and the relationship. Do not continue to cover for an inconsiderate partner. What you don’t mind doing today, or just this once, may lead to a lifetime of doing things you dislike.”

Rhea recommends taking action rather than becoming a chronic complainer. For example, when his wife wanted to get him to stop leaving newsprint smudges on the walls, she took him on a tour of their house and showed him the places where he’d left his mark.

“I was truly surprised when I looked closely, and I could see her point,” he says. “After three times of Lynn throwing a damp cloth in my lap and asking me to find and clean the fingerprints, I discovered my life was less complicated if I paid attention.”

Rhea knows another woman who used action effectively. She couldn’t get her husband to create a new doorway where they planned to connect two rooms in their house. After months of complaining about his procrastination, she finally took a sledgehammer and smashed some holes in the wall where the doorway was supposed to be. Her husband quickly completed the project.

But sometimes, therapists say, the best way to deal with a pet peeve is to learn to live with it.

Carolyn Baustian, a Huntington Beach marriage, family and child counselor, says she has learned, after 40 years of marriage, that most of her pet peeves aren’t worth fighting about.

For example, she says: “In the earlier years of our marriage, I had a lot of difficulty with Ken not calling when he was going to be late. After a lot of anger, I made a decision that this was not a baseline issue.

“I solved the problem by telling him, ‘Dinner will be at 6. I will feed the children then. If you call, I will wait a short time and eat with you or keep your dinner out for you. If you don’t call, you can manage for yourself when you get home.’

“Another issue was the drink can left on the counter when the trash can was right there under the sink. Eventually, I could see that I wasn’t able to control him enough to make him change. I decided it was more important to me than him, and I started putting the can in the trash as soon as I saw it.

“It took much less energy to do this than all the emotional energy I had expended hoping he would do it.”

If you can manage it, use humor to keep pet peeves in perspective.

“If it’s serious, pursue it. If it isn’t serious, laugh about it,” Rhea advises.

Notes Todd Creager: “Learning to accept an irritating habit of a partner can help us to not take ourselves or life so seriously.”