Five ways to phrase irrational demands to get your partner to agree to them

Have an indefensibly unreasonable request of your partner? Need them to agree to it pronto? No problem! Try these five simple tricks to make them sound like they’re being said by a rational adult, rather than by you, a petty mess.

“This affects me emotionally”

In a game of ‘rock, paper, scissors’, emotions are paper; they are thin, inconsequential and ephemeral, but can effectively defeat the rock of rationality. (In this metaphor, scissors are your own guilty conscience about manipulating your partner into agreeing to your unreasonable wants – watch out for that one.)

Phrase it like the request is an obvious decision

“Right?” is an all-powerful linguistic tool for the modern Machiavellian mama. Disguising your demand as a relatable, rhetorical statement is a surefire way to confuse your partner into blindly agreeing with it. It all comes down to making convincing noises. Such demand-concluding noises include: “huh?”,  “eh?”, and “God that sounds reasonable don’t it?”

Use a funny voice

How can they refuse a request made to them by the disembodied voice of Sir Michael Caine, Kermit the Frog, or spooky Victorian ghost child?

Say it when they’re distracted

Usually when your partner appears to be oblivious to what you’re talking about, it is a source of annoyance. Now it’s a sweet, sweet source of unwitting agreement. Good opportunities to look out for are: when they are distracted watching television, when they are distracted browsing social media and, crucially, when they are distracted fending off an attack from a large, aggressive animal.

Shout it through a kitchen funnel in the dead of night

Surprise! It’s me! Talking through a kitchen funnel, covered in our colanders, which I have fashioned into a large, bulbous hat. It really is time that you stopped being friends with Jo from marketing, isn’t it?