Thermostat Wars Between Husband and Wife

With summer and warmer temps, the thermostat power struggle between husband and wife is waging on in many households. Or is power struggle too mild a term? For some, it is all out war.

Normally, the husband adjusts the thermostat to cooler internal temps, with the wife jockeying for warmer positions on the dial. (or digital pad for those homes in the computer age)

That’s how it always USED to be in my household  – I was always F-R-E-E-Z-I-N-G until a weird recent phenomenon took place.

Middle age. And that other M word too that won’t be mentioned. (And by the way the title of this blog is a play on words – it means my Hot Topics more than it means the other)

Now, with my body running very, very warm (make that hot – burning HOT) I want the coolest temperatures possible in my home. An Alaskan winter is looking very good to me right now because I want my home temperature as cool as the average igloo according to my husband.

My husband on the other hand has a thing with his age and thyroid situation where he has been getting chilly all the time.

As usual, we are opposites in body temperature but the situation has completely reversed from before.

Before, it was not uncommon for me to be okay with the thermostat on 80 degrees of air conditioning in summer months along the aid of ceiling fans. I was always cold in air conditioning and had to bring my winter woolies to restaurants, malls and other over-air-conditioned places in the dead of summer. The thermostat at 80 was way too warm for my husband and he would creep it downward into the 70’s. And I would freeze. Too cold for me. Rinse, repeat.

Similarly, I used to put the thermostat high up into the 70’s in the winter during the few cold fronts where we required heat in Houston. He would push it down a bit. In a sneaky way of course, other than the times I would get lectured about energy conservation and costs.

Passive-aggressive behavior, if you ask me. One of us was grumbling all the time about the house temperature.

Now the conversation goes more like this:

Husband, as I am tiptoeing out of bed to the thermostat to push the temp downward: “Don’t touch that dial – I already adjusted it to 68 degrees and it is freezing in here!”

Me: “It is burning hot in this house! Put another blanket on!”

Husband: “Put your bedside fan on and leave the thermostat alone!” (as he erects a huge pillowed wall between us on the bed)

I think I mentioned in a previous blog about buying a bunch of tiny fans at a store at the end of last summer when they were 50 percent off. All I can ask now is, am I the only human that uses a small nightstand fan on full blast in the wintertime?

I think that answer would be no.

Our friend Drew was visiting our area from the North in the wintertime and kind of laughed about our mild temperatures compared to his winter. He was walking around in a tee shirt even with a cold front and some cooler temperatures in Houston last weekend, explaining that he loves cool air and that it was always a struggle with his wife wanting too much heat in the house until she turned middle age.

Drew: Oh, I love it now. The house is really cool, and I just put some blankets on while my wife kicks them off. Geesh, that sounds familiar.

What really floors me is that everyone seems to marry someone with an opposing internal temperature.

So wives and husbands out there, I am here to tell you that those thermostat wars waging right now are temporary! Husbands who like their house a bit chilly – Just wait till middle age.

4 comments

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  • Phil and I don’t have problems like that. We are the perfect couple! (lol)

  • I can identify with this! It used to be, just as the house was barely getting warm enough for me to stop turning blue, my husband would announce that it was unbearably hot and he needed to turn the temperature down. For years, I was freezing while he was sweating. But then things really changed. I would get up from the couch and walk into the kitchen so I could stick my head into the freezer. I was always edging the thermostat down, down, down. When the day finally came that he complained it was too cold in the house — it was almost worth it.

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