So other half is not a car person outside of they like to admire cars and drive but knowing the mechanical aspect is about zero. We typically take my car (EV) during weekend driving to save gas so I don't really ride in the GLI too terribly often.
This morning was our first below freezing day and we hop in, other half starts the car and immediately starts revving it to 4500-5000 RPM.
I said "What are you doing, you know thats not good for the engine!" Response was - "Well its cold." I left it at that as its not worth an argument - other half is 100% responsible for all costs/maintenance of the GLI so it is what it is, they can redline it from a cold start as they please. Don't even get me started on the use of the clutch to hold the car at a stoplight, I attempted to educate on that years ago with no luck.
Being a car person with other half not a car person is a tricky balance.
Well, maybe it's the way you say it that encourages resistance.
Sometimes you have to put the instruction into a context that's relatable. When I was married, my wife insisted on having the station attendant fill her tank. No matter how many times I told her that she could save money by doing it herself, it didn't "sink in." Now some background. At the time, she was taking an aerobics class every morning at a cost of about $5.00 per class. One day, instead of telling her that she'd save $$$ by pumping the gas herself, I tried a different approach. I told her that every time she filled up and pumped the gas herself, she'd get a free aerobics class. She never, ever, had an attendant do it again, even when we traveled.
I had a lady friend in Tel Aviv who was taking instruction to learn to drive. She would always mash the accelerator when starting so that a smooth start was impossible. Her instructor told her numerous times to be gentle, but it did not "sink in." She related her situation to me as she really wanted to get a driving license. I told her to pretend that there was a raw egg under the accelerator pedal. It didn't take long for her to get the hang of making a smooth start.
Same sort of thing with my Grandpa Jack. I was teaching him how to drive in 1962, and he was absolutely awful behind the wheel. He handled the car roughly, on and off the gas abruptly, herky-jerky turns, and so on. Grandpa was a man with little education and experience. He came to this country as a boy of 11 or 12 in the early 1900s. He got a job working for a fellow who had a produce market, and that was pretty much what he knew ... produce. One day, instead of trying to be forceful with him, I blurted out that he should treat the car like a ripe peach. I could almost hear the machinery in his head start to work, and he got the concept. Over the next week or so his driving improved tremendously.
Look, I'm not a smart guy, and I don't mean to disparage your attempts, but with many people (men, women, and children) you've got to explain certain things in a way that they can grasp the concepts. For example, I'm pretty much a dunce when it comes to understanding electricity, and how it works. Many people have given me technical details using terms like amps and watts and whatever-all-else is used to explain the subject. One day someone used the example of water going through a garden hose to explain some of the terms, and the light inside my head went on, albeit dimly. I'm still a dummy wrt electricity, but I'm not as ignorant as I'd been before.
Please guys, try finding some relatable context to help your "better halves" understand the points you're trying to get across.
...good days though.
