When my wife and I first got married we bought a set of steak knives - the one with the black handle. She asked me not to put them in the dishwasher because they'll rust.
That wasn't my experience. Having owned steak knives for years, I always put them in the dishwasher and don't recall ever seeing any rust on them. So when she asked me, repeatedly, I'd argue. My thought process was not one of a servant - I'm washing up and you're being picky about how I wash knives?
That led to an argument, which led to being annoyed with one another. I agreed to not put them in the dishwasher just to end it and then found myself murmuring under my breath once in a while. After all, who cares if they're in the dishwasher, then I didn't need to wash them by hand, right?
As time went on I realized that my attitude was completely wrong. I found Jesus' words in Luke 6:45 to be very true when He said that out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. My mouth was speaking sarcasm and cynicism too easily because my heart thought I was too cool to be told how to do something so trivial as wash a steak knife.
Instead of seeing it as an opportunity to love my wife through a simple act, I chose to be selfish. In the end it became a learning opportunity around communication and more importantly, expectation setting. More on that in a moment.
Some time later the reverse situation occurred. My wife was graciously doing the laundry but I noticed that my shirts would end up on hangers unbuttoned at the top. I suppose I never really thought about it before but that bothered me. I always button the top so that the collar stays in place and didn't think anything of it until I realized my wife simply didn't do that. I asked her several times and she'd react much the same way I did to how the steak knives should be washed.
Naturally, this led to talking. We needed to talk at this point and realized that we didn't think it was that important to communicate about our expectations around the little things in our marriage, yet it was those little things that were driving us to be irritable and annoyed way too often. We solved it by agreeing to set expectations with one another. If she wanted things done a certain way then she needed to be clear about it so there was no room for my interpretation and the same went for me to tell her what I expected.
To say that this has made our marriage that much better would be an understatement. That said, it isn't a one and done event. We have found over the years that we need to keep each other in check around expectations because it's easy to get lazy and complain rather than communicate.
It's important to note that expectations are more often about preferences and not whether something is right or wrong. Communicating our preferences is one form of setting expectations so we can know how to serve one another well. Too often we want to impose our preferences on our spouse and that is where issues appear.
It's ok to have different preferences and it's even more ok to discuss them and use them as an opportunity to love one another better.
If you don't tell me exactly what you want, I can't give you exactly what you need