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The dumb part of any dispute I've had with my wife is thinking I could win.
My wife's siblings and her all have the same weird trait: when things get stressful, they clam up and do this "shut up and let me save the world" thing. Her sister's worked on it a lot because #fireman, but it's a strong compulsion.
The "hmm, maybe if you'd talked to anyone instead of going missing-person" is extra fun when it's a tech thing, as after the stress and the teeth-pulling contextual questions, it's two mouse clicks and an object lesson.
And, when THAT fight's over....
Hard water vs soft water.
So many times we've been in a hotel room and I've taken a shower and commented on what soft water it is because it feels like the soap never rinses off and I feel slippery all over. She always tries to correct me by calling it hard water. She grew up in a desert city that has naturally hard water, so she'll always say, "I know what hard water is, I grew up with hard water!" when the "hard" water she grew up with was softened by some means. It doesn't matter how many articles and blog posts and ChatGPT sessions on the topic I show her, she always insists they're wrong and she's right. We argued about it a few times in the past, but now it's a running joke between us.
Okay, so the water in hotels that sucks at getting soap off (it doesn’t really, but it feels like it does) is softened water. It has been treated to remove calcium, magnesium, and other cations, to prevent scale buildup.
As I understand it skin feels slippery like it hasn’t removed the soap for potentially a few reasons. General consensus is that either you’re feeling whatever salt they put in the water to treat it, or you’re feeling the lack of those minerals. That is, you’re use to the water making your skin feel less slippery because of the various minerals in it, so the absence of those minerals makes it feel slippery. You get used to this eventually, but it’s annoying if you aren’t used to softened water.
The confusion comes in because in home water systems, you really only need a water softener if the water in the area is particularly hard. So it’s easy to associate softened water with hard water. Because you don’t really need to soften water that isn’t high in mineral deposits (unless you’re a hotel trying to minimize cleaning costs and are treating a fuckload of water centrally).
So you’re both right. It’s soft water because it’s been softened. And it’s been softened because it’s hard water. 😂
Just had this discussion/argument with my mom last week!
Oh man do I hate soft water. Granted soap doesn't lather as well with hard water but whenever I shower someplace with soft water I feel like I'm spending 20 minutes just trying to get the soap off. Also I hate drinking softwater
The lather isn't what gets you clean anyway, they even add stuff to make the detergents lather more because of the perception that it gets you cleaner. Any lather at all with a proper soap says you're using enough soap to get clean.
It has become an ongoing issue that my wife complains that she smells something, then gets angry at me if I am unable to smell that same smell, sometimes accusing me of gas lighting her or calling her a liar, when actually I just don't smell the smell she's smelling.
I'm not making implications or accusations, I'm not trying to mislead or confuse her, I just can't smell whatever she's smelling and that fact frustrates the heck out of her as though I'm personally letting her down. Then she gets a bit aggro and I have to change the garbages / kitchen compost in the hopes that perhaps those are the sources of the smells I can't smell. Sometimes that helps. She will never change the garbage or take out the compost herself.
When she insisted that she smelled a gas leak from our furnace that I couldn't smell, we called a professional who confirmed our furnace was working fine and there was no gas leak; but I was still the villain for denying the gas leak ahead of time. Three times in the last 6 months this has been a thing.
Hey, not sure how old y’all are and such, but this can be a sign of dementia. This happened with my great grandma telling us things smelled of sulphur.
Flip the script, say she’s gaslighting you by pretending to smell things that aren’t there.
(Don’t actually do this unless you really hate your relationship.)
My wife also has a better sense of smell then me. We don't fight about it but I have spent a bunch of time trying to find the phantom smell.
She's pregnant now and her super smell is even more potent. So I had to do a lot of kitchen cleaning and I had to a lot of cooking. It's a thing for sure
I attacked my wife on the Game of Thrones board game while she was at 6 castles and I was at 4.
I just decided not to play games that cutthroat with mine
How dare you, that's a relationship ender right there