I’m really nice at acknowledging what I can and cannot fix.
Whenever something breaks or stops finally working as it should, I delicately try to repair it myself.
However, as soon as I realize that things require professional help, I immediately stop trying to repair things and contact someone who knows what they’re doing. While I’m really great about doing this, my spouse is horrendous at it. He never prefers to confess that he isn’t capable of doing something himself. I know it’s a guy thing, unfortunately, there are some things that need professional guidance and should be left alone otherwise. For example, when our oil furnace started running without stopping, my spouse decided to take things into his own hands. While he’s really pretty good at fixing and repairing a lot of things, HVAC systems are not his specialty. I proposed to my spouse that we should hire a professional HVAC supplier to come find the issue, although he wouldn’t have it. Instead, he spent an entire day taking things apart and trying to find the root of the problem. He couldn’t put all the pieces back together and our oil furnace stopped working entirely. After I begged him to please just give up, he broke down and called the heating and cooling expert to come repair our oil furnace. The HVAC technician charged us an arm and a leg to put everything back together and “repair” the issue. According to the friendly and patient HVAC professional, the two of us just needed a new air filter. Had we just called him first, we could have saved several hundred dollars. I don’t know if my spouse will ever learn to say “I don’t know”.