Nagging versus Drilling

The incessant nagging you do not only drives your partner mad, it drives him or her away and hurts intimacy. How can you learn to communicate more effectively and go from being a broken record to a poster child for relationship success? The first step is to recognize that asking for the same thing over and over again -- believe it or not -- just doesn't work.

Nagging is repetitious behavior in the form of pestering, hectoring, or otherwise continuously urging an individual to complete previously discussed requests or act on advice. The word is derived from the Scandinavian nagga, which means "to gnaw".  As expressed by Elizabeth Bernstein, a Wall Street Journal reporter, nagging is "the interaction in which one person repeatedly makes a request, the other person repeatedly ignores it and both become increasingly annoyed".

Most naggers don't know they nag -- they think their nagging helps and is just the repetition of useful tips. But the truth is, it's not up to them to decide if they are nagging or not: a helpful reminder becomes a stinging nag when the person who is being nagged says so.